Thom, a lot of people who have a need to create chaos are driven by less observable, unconscious processes like old fury that is being displaced onto contemporary scapegoats. This is a more psychological way of understanding people then a description of their overt behavior. In his book, DISORDERED MINDS - How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, Ian Hughes describes rulers like Hitler and Stalin as having a drive for absolute power over others and no conscience about how they achieve that end. These SOCIOPATHS are a small percentage of the population but they are attracted to positions of power in places like police departments, big business, and politics. As adolescents and young adults these, mostly men, join gangs and militant groups to find a sense of belonging and empowerment. They spread chaos to express their childhood rage at authority and assert their dominance. This is how they reassure themselves that they are powerful, unlike how they felt as children. Trump and Putin crave dominance and have no conscience about how that is achieved. So do many of the people who align with them.
Ms. Taylor, don't you think we might better concentrate our attention on the kinds of social organizations which give us the people you describe, the organization which enables them: Hitler, Stalin, Putin, "these, mostly men" who "join gangs and militant groups" and forget about "unconscious" motives and behavior? When you think about it doesn't the term "unconscious" behavior have an element of an oxymoron about it?
Professor, what social organizations are you referring to, that give us people who operate without conscience? I tend to believe that the most formative social organization in cultures that produce a certain percentage of sociopathic, malignant narcissists in Western cultures, is the nuclear family. However, I completely agree that there are widening circles of influence as a baby becomes a toddler, then a child, adolescent, and adult. In all of these developmental stages the culture (including the nuclear family) continues to exert influence over the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of its members, including whatever social organizations you had in mind...Absolutely, yes.
The reason I describe unconscious processes is that the effects of the cultural surround, including the nuclear family, have their greatest effect in the earliest years, then fall into the background of consciousness. Paradoxically, the more unconscious a belief is, such as "big boys don't cry," the stronger the hold it has over the individual or culture. These beliefs and attitudes, over time, become unassailable "truths." Their influence is almost total until a critical mass of people in that culture consciously challenge it.
I endorse your approach, if I have it right, of drawing the behaviors and social phenomena Thom (and Cambridge) observe back into the context of previously identified psychologies.
I'm not convinced that we need a new "agents of chaos" category, or whether it's useful .
I find this extremely helpful and clarifying. If the liberal media does nothing to vanquish the myth of the BLM riots and then the Dems acquiesce in increasingly militarized policing there’s no way out of this disaster. The Rightwing media have successfully spread this racist idea of “law and order” while sowing chaos and violence.it’s Orwellian: violence is law, chaos is order. Strenuous and intelligent opposition to that strategy has been lacking. As we saw in the ridiculous montage at the 2020 Dem convention attempting to assuage the protestors while doubling down on police. How can we widely propagate your points here?
What liberal media? Free Speech TV? Democracy now, because for the life of me, I can't think of any liberal media, maybe some monthly publications, but not a media on television.
If you get your info from satellite or cable, you are getting spin from corporate media, even MSNBC and corporate media is center right to extreme right.
Blogs and substack are not liberal media.
I guess one could assert that internet news letters are media, but hardly, because most if not all
have a relatively small level of subscription.
Media like NYT and WAPO, are not liberal either, They are corporate, and whatever objective reporting is done by them, it is undone by their Opinion page, which too often are hard right of center, even Trumpist.
And the media should be judged not by just what it prints, but what it chooses not to print, like Global Warming, but that would upset the advertisers and share holders
I knew of this element long ago. I was an MP in Germany, and we worked with the Polizei. Their police had college educations and great training. One of them explained to me that when the neo-nazis demonstrated, there would be an overwhelming number of anti-nazi counter-demonstrators and it was intense. He went on to say the third faction is the real problem. His description was that they only wanted to "break windows and steal TVs".
This is primarily males, but it is not exclusive. The anarchy folks have been lurking around forever looking for opportunity---often criminal opportunities.
The destruction of property facilitates the theft in some cases. It can involve political and anti-social types, who might feel a release.of the pressure they perceive. Some others simply think it's fun and take great pleasure in it without regard for the misery, pain and death that can result. Criminal, perverse, and damaged people are in the mix. They absolutely have various mental conditions, and we need to continue to study how they got there and how to help them.
Mr. /Ms. alis, fascinating that you worked mit der Polizi. I have nothing against giving der Polizi good education and training. But in the end what you end up with is a cop who says sir as he bashes my head with a night stick. Cops are employees who know what their boss requires of them.
Who are these agents of chaos? I have found them to be losers. Most of them can't support themselves and can't manage any kind of a relationship with a woman or a man. Most of them are men without a decent job and with a criminal record and with drug problems. There are so many displaced males out there, they are envious and jealous of those that can actually have fun, so they go out of their way to make everybody miserable, not just themselves. About a third of Americans in my opinion at least should be locked up in a mental institution, but we don't have the capabilities to do that.
The Nazis or GOP fascists, whatever you want to call them, promise them that they will be put in the hierarchy if they use their antisocial behavior for the billionaires. It is all they have to live for. The family unit has created these monsters and the fascist will use them to bully the humans around with. That is why in my opinion the religions and the elites have worked together for thousands of years in order to reign terror and keep control of the humans by supporting the family unit.
During the WTO riots in Seattle a few years back, and frankly since then, when ever there is a protest, dudes dressed in black show up and all they do is break windows and destroy property and they are never arrested, just as in Portland. Agents Provocateurs, is what they are.
Some think that they are protected and encouraged by government, others that they are right wingers, and others that they are anarchists, which are neither left nor right.
One thing to consider is that are all dressed in a uniform, from boots to black clothing and face covering.
Yep, except there is no organization named antifa, some wag shortened antifascist to antifa because they thought it was cool, turned out to be a bad propaganda manuever, as it disguises that the word is short for antifascists, and though they are reluctant to declare themselves fascists, they have no problem in accusing antifascists of the crimes they are guilty of.
And then there is Trump who delights in pulling every epithet of evil out of the basement and hurl them at those who are actually antifascists.
Hard to pick a place to jump in, but humbly reflecting on observed behavior: moms with kids in laundromats. Little girl dutifully helping Mom. Brother careening around the place wildly, ignored by Mom, who is complaining to little girl about what a slob Dad is, always expecting to be picked-up after. Like Ms. Taylor says: unconsciously training her son.
Good insight. I did most of the housework from the age of about seven; my brothers did none. My father said, "They're boys" and that excused them from all the work.
Half of families don't even have a father nowadays. The mails grow up emulating TV characters who are thugs. If they show signs of being humane in any way, they get the stuffings beat out of them and called it rhymes with maggot. Intellectuals have a hard time in this nation if you're male. Everything we do is right or wrong, moral or immoral positive or negative. In order to be intelligent you have to be right and you have to care if you are right or wrong. Therein lies the problem.
I also agree completely, that for thousands of years boys have been trained to be aggressive in a way that serves the ruling elite.
I have always seen this as the cruelest form of emotional and physical abuse of boys… They are emotionally killed off in earliest childhood and then trained to physically kill one another as they get older. To create a more peaceful and harmonious world we need to lift the taboo on tenderness in the rearing of boys.
Once upon a time, like when I was a kid, women, especially white middle-class-and-up women, were trained in certain ways too. Individually, in groups, and in whole movements we fought successfully to expand the options for people of our sex. This often had the effect of expanding options for the other sex too. Why haven't we seen a comparable movement to "lift the taboo on tenderness in the rearing of boys"?
I suggest it's because what we're dealing with here isn't a taboo: it's the price of admission to a privileged place in the patriarchal system. No matter where a man is in the social structure, he ranks higher than women at the same level. That's a powerful incentive to play the game the way he's taught to play it. And some men, especially older white men, seem to be very angry and/or depressed that their privileged place (for which they have indeed sacrificed so much, whether they realize it or not) is being questioned.
I was struck long ago by something the poet-essayist Adrienne Rich wrote in _Of Woman Born_: "If I could have one wish for my own sons, it is that they should have the courage of women. I mean by this something very concrete and precise: the courage I have seen in women who, in their private and public lives, both in the interior world of their dreaming, thinking, and creating, and the outer world of patriarchy, are taking greater and greater risks, both psychic and physical, in the evolution of a new vision." I typed this on a small piece of paper, folded it up, and carried it in my wallet until it finally came apart at the creases.
Susan, I agree completely with your observation that, for boys, a certain set of attitudes and character traits is "...the price of admission to a privileged place in the patriarchal system." The taboo on tenderness of which I speak is most obvious in the early messages many boy babies (still) receive regarding how they're expected to behave, what human characteristics they're expected to value, and who they end up emulating. This is how, generation after generation, a certain definition of "masculinity" has become a global norm. I get where Adrienne Rich is coming from, and I think that as child rearing practices continue to evolve, lifting the taboo on tenderness towards little boys, and permitting little girls to assert their individuality, that boys AND girls, are repudiating the silos of gender they've been restricted to.
My gosh, "thousands of years"? Are you even remotely aware of the evidence about the wide variations in the rearing of males which is found in the literature of Cultural Anthropology? Apparently not.
Thanks for bringing that up, Professor Dobbertin. I am aware, and very interested in, how boys have been reared in other cultures. It seems that our adult personalities both masculine and feminine, are largely shaped by the messages we receive growing up in our specific cultures. Would you agree with that?
I completely agree...it is possible for people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to continue to evolve, especially if there is support for doing so within that person's inner circle of significant others or within the larger culture. That's one of the aspects of life that is generally prohibited in totalitarian regimes, including family configurations that operate like dictatorships...only obedience to authority is tolerated. :(
Trouble is, this "extreme" behavior is on the continuum of what is widely considered in our society acceptable male behavior. Maybe "most of them can't support themselves" (etc.), but some of them are running hedge funds, real estate empires, and corporations and even managing relationships, though those relationships are often seriously dysfunctional.
I used to attend a variety of "investment" seminars and conventions. Mostly men promoters, and I was "woke" enough to be offended when they would joke, haha, about don't give your credit card to your wife/girlfriend after you made all that money. Cretins. But I also overheard the "suits" in the restaurants, and they really boosted each other about the government interfering with their CONTROL over their women.
Truth. They are high-level chaos agents and IMO they're more culpable than the ones who are mainly doing it for the adrenaline rush. They've gone beyond chaos agent to active chaos agitators.
Bob, I absolutely agree with you. Disaffected men were once neglected, abused, unloved little boys. They have ancient reasons for being enraged and for needing to express that fury in the present moment. These are men who were deeply hurt and humiliated in earliest childhood when they had no power to affect the people who were hurting them. Because of these intense, unresolved feelings they don't form secure relationships throughout their development, and arrive in adolescence and early adulthood with pain and rage chronically coursing through their veins. They either join militant groups and gangs to feel some sense of affiliation or they remain extremely isolated and their suffering continues until they explode in the mass shootings we see taking place every day. As a society we need to raise boys with a greater awareness of their longing for love and their need for tenderness in early childhood. We need to stop ridiculing and humiliating little boys for what are normal, human needs for affection and comfort when life is hard. ♥️♥️♥️
Ms. Taylor. "their suffering continues until they explode in mass shootings.."
Let us please be careful about the metaphor of human beings exploding. It has misled many of us for a long time. I, for one, am 81 yrs. and I remember hearing that metaphor all my life. It explains nothing. Human beings are not pressure cookers or bombs about to explode. Metaphors serve a good use from time to time. But we must be cautious about how we use them. Metaphors are not an acceptable substitute for analysis.
Furthermore, those mass killers, just like serial killers, usually tell us what their motives were/are on blogs, in their conversations with friends, and in suicide notes left behind, found by the police. Are you familiar with the intelligent, well educated Unabomber? Ted Kaszinski had a Phd. in mathematics. He stated his case quite clearly, in writing. The NYTimes, somewhat reluctantly, published his "manifesto."
These people are overwhelmingly white males. They hate others whom they believe are replacing them. Remember "Jews will not replace us?" Hatred of jews is ancient among Christians and Muslims. Caucasian hatred of Negros is as old as slavery in the Americas: 400 years. More White Americans should read THE 1619 PROJECT.
Would you agree that the males that commit suicide implode and the males that kill a whole bunch of people they don't even know explode? Because of unlimited greed, religion and the family unit!
Mr. Johnson "about a third of Americans should be locked up in a mental institution"?????? Think about this for a minute! Who or what is normal or acceptable in their behavior? And who should decide what is normal or acceptable? Who should have the power to lock them up?
I'm thinking of all the different religions that believe fairy tales to be truthful with no evidence. They are delusional and they make up about 85% of the population.
The broken of character feed on our attention and reaction. Abandon them.
The hostile adversaries of democracy - both foreign and domestic - feed on the innocent, the ignorant, and the arrogant. Starve them.
Leave behind the parasitic antisocial duopoly that is "X" and Facebook (and of course other lesser platforms with similar algorithms). They have proven to be unquestionably toxic to civility, logic, and democracy.
They are a breeding ground of disorder, by intent. They sell us on connectedness and the sharing of free thought. They deliver us division and the proliferation of chaos. Walk away.
Our nearly monolithic system of virtual information sharing is unsustainable in its own right, as chaos is by definition unstable. The damage this inflicts upon the real world is no different - we are living in its fruition.
Social media will need to be realized in smaller, purpose-based forums - such as the Hartmann Report - to remain legitimate and relevant.
Good comment. I walked away from FB three years ago. I did lose touch with some friends and had others give me a hard time about it. I miss out on parties, etc., but Neve really enjoyed much of that anyway. I don't frequent X, but do occasionally go and read something referenced there. It isn't just social media. The main stream media has been bought up by billionaires (even the supposed "left-leaning" sources,) and consolidated to heck and back. I used to admire, for example, The Washington Post, but they have turned right, using subtle methods to make it seem like they are still the good old Post and that their new owner Bezos doesn't interfere. They feature an ever-increasing parade of right-wing articles, often full of falsehoods, written by people who are lousy journalists. The Post lets a lot of criticism go on in their forums, but say something that gets under their skin (a serious point) on a forum and out goes your comment and then, out you go for a while. I had to pay for a year, but have cancelled any future subscription. I have extreme distaste for Trump, but agree with him on one point: the media is not our friend. The Fourth Estate is broken.
These people are a lot like the Joker in, "The Dark Knight." Enjoying the disruption and cruelty for its own sake. It's widespread -- what's fueling it? A feeling of being on the outside of what's going on -- and pure evil, the desire to destroy.
Back in the heyday of the antiwar movement, late '60s and early '71s, I lived in D.C. and was a peacekeeper (we were called marshals then) at quite a few marches and demonstrations, some of them very large (like the November 1969 Mobe march on Washington). Part of our function was to keep the "chaos agents" away from not only the demonstrators and marchers but from the police. They didn't call themselves chaos agents, of course: if they claimed an organizational affiliation it would have been to a far-lefty group like Progressive Labor or the Spartacist League. They were often fans of Chairman Mao, especially his dictum about political power coming from the barrel of a gun. I knew a few guys who believed that police brutality radicalized people so they'd do stuff like throw rocks at the police in an attempt to make them beat up the demonstrators. (This was why we tried to establish cordial relationships with the police before the demo got underway.) They were overwhelmingly male and almost as overwhelmingly white.
Much more recently, some of what flies under the "antifa" banner has reminded me a lot of those antiwar experiences. For some, fighting fascism becomes a matter of brawling with individual fascists. It's rumbling for the sake of rumbling, Sharks vs. Jets (but without the soundtrack). And as far as I can tell, it's still mostly a guy thing.
Well, there are a fair number of women in the MAGA movement, and a goodly number of them support/promote/commit violence. Ashley Babbitt comes to mind. It IS mostly white men, but the are encouraged and supported by the women in their movement. We see it all over the country, "Karens" threatening people, slapping them, taking phones, etc.
In both 2016 and 2020 more than half of all white women voters voted for Trump. They're not all MAGAs by any means, but it's still an important data point. I'm pretty sure that nearly all of them are straight and identify with the interests of "their" men, even when their own interests conflict. And yes, the racist "Karens" get a lot of press -- whether they vote or not I don't know -- but let's not forget that virtually all of the "people" who show up with semiautomatic weapons and kill people of color are men.
Testosterone - the philosopher Ken Wilbur calls it the "fu*k it or kill it" hormone. We don't teach young men any way to manage it, and, in fact, encourage them (through violent sports such as football) to express it.
Ms. Sturgis, I too was at that "march on Washington" However, I remember it as a march on the Pentagon and against the immoral, shameful, Viet Nam war. Our reasons were rational and moral. I can still see Abby Hoffman sitting in the middle of the Pentagon's parking area Murmuring aaoouwm as he and his buddies "levitated" the Pentagon. It was hilarious. But had no power. The real power, however was in the barrels of the M1 Garand rifles pointed at my chest by the soldiers surrounding the Pentagon's entrance. I also still remember the young person who inserted a flower into the barrel of a soldier's rifle. Then too, I recall and filmed the U.S. Marshals forming an armed protective ring around the Fascists who held up signs proclaiming "America is your freedom castle. Protect it against the godless Communists."
This was not a "guy thing." The courageous demonstrator who inserted the flower was a female.
Gerald, I like hearing your reminiscences regarding the anti-war years of the '60's and early 70's. I think Susanna was asserting that war is a "guy-thing." Competition, organized killing, etc. If a young woman placed a flower into the barrel of a gun that would be somewhat of a typical "girl-thing," don't you think? The photo I remember was of a young MAN placing a flower into the barrel of gun pointed at him...THAT made an impression on me as he seemed to be breaking ranks with what the dominant culture typically expected of men. I also remember the young man who stood before the huge tank in Tianenmen Square some years later. THAT'S a photo I won't forget.
No, I was not saying that war is guy thing, although it is. If you'll read my OP again, you'll see that I was talking specifically about the "chaos agents" on the fringes of the the antiwar movement in the late '60s and comparing them to *some* of "what flies under the 'antifa' banner." Thom's column is about chaos agents, so that's what I focused on. Chaos agents thrive on the fringes of large gatherings. And until someone provides solid evidence to the contrary, I'll continue to believe that they're overwhelmingly male.
Thanks for clarifying that, Susanna, and my apologies for getting it wrong.
It seems to me that the "chaos agents who thrive on the fringes of large gatherings" are performing an act of misdirection. They seem to want to undermine the legitimacy of peaceful protests in order to discredit the perspective and the grievances of the marchers. It feels as if they want to confuse the issue in order to disrupt the flow of society's empathy for the cause for which the march was organized.
They not only sow chaos in the form of physical violence but chaos in our minds as well. Their ultimate objective is to confuse the media and the message of the marchers. To me they are like an envious older sibling who bullies the younger one, then complains bitterly when the mom or dad empathizes with the child who's being bullied. They scream, "But you didn't see what he did to me! I'm the one who's getting hurt here, don't empathize with him! He's not Mr. goody two shoes… I'm the one you should care about, not him!"
People like Trump, abusive men, and cult leaders always impose their way of seeing the world on susceptible others and they can't stand it when anyone else gets attention or compassion. They need all the attention and all of the compassion… Only them and no one else has a legitimate gripe.
Just in general, I'm not sure that most of the chaos agents have motives the way we understand motive, as in "cause -> effect." When they do, like the far-lefties I used to see at big rallies and demos, their explanations are flawed at best. "We'll provoke the police to beat up the demonstrators and that will prove that the state is fascist and they should join us"? That's far-fetched enough to be ludicrous. It makes more sense to see chaos itself as the motive and "what happens next" as of minimal concern.
I appreciate your perspective about seeing chaos itself as the motive. It might actually be that in the minds of the guys who are sowing physical chaos, that's their only conscious goal. However, just to clarify, I wasn't talking about conscious or purposeful motives that chaos agents, themselves, might articulate but rather underlying, even unconscious motives that can sometimes be deduced by the outcome of their actions.
I am likening this to disinformation campaigns, the goal of which is to sow doubt in the mind of the public, or misdirection campaigns that point the finger back at the other side and hurl the descriptor back at them. The goal, conscious or not is to sow chaos in the mind of the other side, to confuse the narrative and even invert it entirely, Orwellian style.
Gerald, I believe you're remembering a different march: the march on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. The one Norman Mailer wrote about in _Armies of the Night_ It was big, but not as big as the November 15, 1969, march, which was the culmination of three days of antiwar action, including the intensely moving procession of people from Arlington Cemetery to the White House. Each one carried a placard bearing the name of a service member who'd died in Vietnam. These were deposited in coffins in front of the White House. I wasn't able to participate in that because I was helping house and feed out-of-town demonstrators at Georgetown U., where I was a freshman.
If we want to understand these "agents of chaos," we need to look at how they were raised. From the Wiki: "Researchers estimate that 85% of American youth have been physically punished by parents during childhood or adolescence." People do to their children things that would earn them serious time in prison if they did it to another adult, and unless the kid ends up in the hospital, or are so severely injured a teacher has to report, there are rarely consequences. Children are not infrequently whipped to death or otherwise killed by "punishment" in the USA. More often, they are whipped into trauma and later suffer PTSD (I speak from experience.) In this case, it is mothers doing the lion's share of the violence, and it may contribute to the generalized hatred and fear of women - misogyny.
Corporal punishment leads to a well of anger that eventually becomes generalized and is visited outward into the community, especially by males due to the tendency of violence that comes with testosterone. We don't talk about the link between widespread violence and our religiously-sanctioned abuse of children. We don't ask questions or keep much in the way of data, because people prefer to turn a blind eye. It was common, growing up in the 50's, to hear religious leaders talk about "breaking the spirit" of a child to "bring them to God." Everyone beat their kids, and as a child of seven, I watched a mother, in public, pull a switch from a Weeping Willow and whip her 2-year old to welts, with him screaming, for splashing the other kids in the kiddie pool. Nobody interfered. Another time, also at a very young age, I saw a mother take her daughter into the basement of the church and whipped her with a patent leather belt - the reason? The little girl squirmed during the sermon. Again, nobody interfered. I would be willing to bet most of these chaos agents are survivors of childhood abuse. Here's a short and interesting read:
For centuries in Europe, the belief was that if you didn't "break the will" of the child, he or she wouldn't get into heaven. A nice rationalization. Beating "the hell" out of your kids was rewarded by the culture, and NOT doing so was seen as parental neglect. The Church encouraged the behavior of displacing your pent up rage onto a helpless child. It was also OK for men to beat women. The parents who beat children weren't considered sinful for doing so...it was the child who'd been sinful and deserved the beating.
Christopher Columbus, when he got to the "New World" wrote that he was horrified that Native Americans didn't beat their children...how would they get into heaven if they hadn't been beaten?
Freud raised the issue of child sexual abuse, specifically, in 1896 and his colleagues shunned him. Eighteen months later he retracted that theory and never returned to it, even though others did, with great difficulty. The women's movement in the 1960's returned attention to the very real fact of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of children, and Alice Miller, the Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote extensively about how parents can use their children in any way that suits them with little or no fear of interference. Her explanation of what made Hitler such a sociopathic murderer includes descriptions of how his father beat him mercilessly, on a daily basis, once almost killing him.
James Gilligan, an expert on the relationship between violence experienced in childhood and criminal behavior as an adult adds one more element...the mental cruelty of verbal ridicule and humiliation meted out by the person who is also physically abusing the child.
So yes, hidden violence in child rearing causes pain, powerlessness, revenge fantasies and ultimately a repetition of displaced rage generation after generation, making ours a very violent culture, perpetually.
I've read Alice Miller's works as well as others documenting much of what you've said. Mary Trump has written about the neglect and both physical and emotional abuse visited upon Donald Trump by his parents.
Child abuse in the USA is saturated with "the banality of evil." I had a typical Kansas upbringing by an alcoholic, lapsed-Catholic step-father and a Southern Baptist mother, which meant I was beaten regularly, as were my siblings. There was nothing outrageous about this to the community. Everyone I knew beat their kids. We lived in abject poverty (not even any shampoo for our hair or soap for our bodies) and know that poverty can breed violence, but even kids from "good" homes were beaten. My parents weren't uniformly bad and, though it has taken a lifetime, I have been able to develop some degree of compassion for them.
Girls were required to wear skirts to school; pants were not allowed. It was common to see welts across the back legs of girls. Boys probably had the same welts, but they were covered. Uncovered welts, though, added to the shame. It was a public announcement that girls (and by extension, women) could be beaten without consequence. This continued through high school.
My poor family. We were five siblings I was the eldest and was often beaten because the others didn't behave. My next-in-age brother devolved into mental illness, the meds for which killed him in his early forties. My next down brother denies much of the abuse, but is afflicted with a myriad of physical problems, including eczema and psoriasis, heart problems and Bell's palsy. He, of course, passed the abuse down and his eldest son recently died of alcoholism and his daughter is a hard-core addict. His emotional life, until he was past 60, was (like the rest of us) a mess, with multiple marriages, affairs, etc. Next is a sister who has been disabled for much of her life and in pain with numerous auto-immune problems, breast cancer and other medical issues. Finally, my baby sister also deals with many physical problems (and advanced cancer.) As for me, that's a long story for another time, but let's just say there's been a lot of chaos, leading to an almost monastic life.
I have two children and I did not beat or neglect them, so the chain CAN be broken, if one is willing to do the work. I left their father because he wanted to beat them, as he was beaten. I wasn't having it.
Google "spanking" and there are 316 MILLION hits. Look at the incidence of back and hip pain in middle aged and older people - I believe this a direct result of the beatings.
So sad. I grew up in the shadow of Dad's belt and Granddad's "famous" stropping strap hanging on the back of the door in the grandparents' bathroom. My Mom was the boss of the punishment, and I have a vague idea that my Dad wasn't really into it. Would be more comfort if I thought he liked me much, anyway. I'll never forget the impact of reading Alice Miller's account of the parent "teaching" the child to "share" by insisting on an adult sized bite of the child's ice cream! Lordy, did that ring a bell! My sympathies with your "poor family." I have never regretted not reproducing: maybe sound instincts not to continue bad traditions I ultimately have never "come to grips with," but certainly only began to grapple with as fertility was fading anyway.
Gosh, Mmerose...it hurts to hear that you endured beatings with a leather strap. I'm so sorry you had to endure that horrible injustice. You are another person, like SuZie, who was determined to not repeat these patterns of abuse and you're to be commended, as is she, for managing to break the cycle.
I think what we're saying here is that it's probable that young men who become agents of chaos, either at the fringes of peaceful marches or at the head of a political party that's become a cult, are people who've been raised with physical, sexual, or emotional abuse to such an extent, that it's left them with a deep, inner rage, the origins of which remain out of awareness. Precisely because the original reason for their vengeful anger is out of awareness, it becomes more likely that it will find a "justifiable" outlet in the current moment. That solves several issues...they have a "legitimate" target for their fury, they get to 'rage against the machine,' of authority, and they never have to confront their real parents or their real pain, both of which are scary things to do.
Wow, SuZie...my heart goes out to you, and thanks so much for sharing. You're one of the amazing people who's been through a violent upbringing but made sure you didn't repeat it with your own children. You even divorced your husband over that issue. Your posts are full of wisdom so you've obviously gained a lot due to your own search to understand your family.
I believe the "agents of chaos" of which Thom speaks on this thread, are men who grew up such as you describe. They must definitely be hurt people who hurt people, because of stored rage and a determination to oppose "authority" and belatedly vindicate the powerless child they used to be.
Thank you. I probably erred on the side of sharing "too much," but I believe the more open we are about these things, the more change we can effect. My sister, who is disabled, says, "I wish our parents had better lives, then we would have had better lives." She's a very forgiving person. Violence is a chain and it didn't start with me, and it didn't start with the "agents of chaos" described by Thom. Both my parents grew up during the depression. Neither had even a high school diploma. My step-father's father was brutal, for example, once plunging my grandmother's hands into boiling water for something she said. My mother had five children, no money, and a drunk for a husband, but a religion that said she couldn't leave him. And what if she did anyway? Women's opportunities were purposely limited so the they COULDN'T leave brutal men because that was the church's way of control. I was very judgmental about her for many years, and some of that was justified, but not a lot of it. Everyone who hits a child as viciously as she did, (well, they both did) makes a choice to do so. So some blame is in order. Yet, I regret some of my judgements. Yes, she was very violent, but when I look back at her life, it was all just so sad.
This violence and cruelty is just so unnecessary. To this day, I blame the church - fairly or unfairly.
I hear you, SuZie, I agree completely with your conclusions as to the source of much of the pain your mother experienced, and I feel a lot of sympathy for the brutality you, then, had to endure. It is terribly sad...absolutely. Thousand of years of the Catholic Church perpetuating patriarchal standards and commands has caused incalculable amounts of pain. :(
"Generation after generation..." Only reflecting on the mutual anger of the siblings of my mother's generation did I realize the story told of the previous generation was about estrangement and misery, too. What is fascinating is the degree of conviction my Mom and her siblings had that they were the people who knew how everybody else should act. They hated and judged all the "usual suspects", completely oblivious to acting out mutual antagonism in their own relationship.
Exactly...and how perceptive of you to connect the dots between your mother's childhood experiences and how she behaved toward you. As Alice Miller has suggested, your Mom and siblings weren't just copying the behaviors of their parents, although that's part of it. In some unconscious region of their body-mind they were now avenging the powerless children they used to be by displacing the rage they didn't dare show their parents, onto smaller, powerless others who couldn't hit back. Now THEY were the "powerful ones," someone had to listen to THEM...and somewhere inside of them, that must have felt "good." :(
There are some excellent comments here and I can't add much. Trump always reminded me of an angry little boy with a box of matches. Is he a deliberate chaos agent? Probably not as his businesses, for all their corruption and ruination of others (like his contractors) were organized enterprises designed to make profits. A better example might be how Hitler developed his Reich, with overlapping and confusing levels of authority (for example between the Party and the state governments or between different arms of the national authority) so that no one person could gather too much power.
I have met people who lived on chaos, and that seemed to give them a certain "control" of their lives, always being in a soap opera crisis of the moment. And I suppose a person without a deep understanding of history or government would see the news, particularly as distorted by Fox and the like, as an example of how chaotic the world is (and by implication how necessary a strong leader was). But as others have said some people just like to smash things. I would guess they have deep anger and sickness, perhaps reflecting their own sense of very low self-esteem. They have holes inside them that can never be filled by either praise, momentary success or the attention brought about by doing endless damage.
I agree with all of what you said, doc, regarding people who appear to love chaos. One guess is that people like Trump play the game called, "Let's you and him fight." They ultimately feel powerful when they set in motion conflict between others. It comes from a need to feel that they have an impact on people. "I cause conflict and chaos, therefore I am."
Oh yes, Madeline and Bob. As The New Yorker once put it, Trump thinks he looks big by making everyone else look small. Compare that with Gandhi's statement that, "A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create." Trump will never get it.
I have known many people who were very disruptive, in order to get a reaction out of someone who just wants to ignore them. You are right on, I feel sorry for the needy one and I feel sorry for the one who wants to get space between the needy one.
I had always thought that this chaos was and would be on the periphery of our 2 party system ( and a nod to those heady days of the peace movement during the 60’s and 70’s which as you said resulted in extreme leftist sects-but the country became less reactionary and the WU/ Black Panthers/SDS factions became less relevant). But the Steve Bannon erupted on the scene in 2015 and he espouses nihilism and I couldn’t figure out where fit it. And now it makes sense as his purpose is bring chaos and he brought that into the WH, and left the road map as he was escorted out.
I would really like to know what he did to become persona non grata at the Oval.
Mitch, the Panthers didn't die out because they were irrelevant, but because they were attacked and killed off by, I believe, the Oakland police.
Yet again, it appears that the white, male power structure couldn't tolerate self-confident men of color asserting their right to oppose their own oppression.
I have no idea what happened to Steve Bannon but my sense of the former guy is that he can't stand anyone who doesn't function as a complete reflection of him. If Bannon had an idea of his own that might've been enough to get him banished… Who knows? Bannon and Stephen Miller, to me, are as scary as Trump because they seem the most unconscious and disconnected from their feelings, with no capacity for empathy with other human beings.
The newest sociopath on the block, in my opinion, is Ramaswamy. The fact that the media is beginning to be dazzled by him gives me spielkas. (anxiety, in Yiddish)
Madeline, I agree w much of what you say but I was at school in DC in the early 70’s, just enough to witnessassive protests, a few heads split open, but nothing like 1970 when RFK stadium was used as a jail and tear gas was something you got used to on the way to class. The Panthers were around and Rennie Davis (SDS/Chicago 7) spoke in our auditorium and we were still willing to go out there and make a difference. But the draft ended ( lottery instituted), the war was winding down and Nixon resigning in disgrace helped keep the lid on. There was a definite sea change, enough of one that peanut farmer w an engineering degree in nuclear energy was elected president. But I do remember Hoover hunting down the panthers.
Thank you, Mitch, for filling in those details. I was at Cal Berkeley in the late 60's and early 70's. I was demonstrating a lot also and aware of the Black Panthers and their efforts to protect their communities. I just read an article that states that "...at least 29 members of the Panthers were killed in confrontations with or ambushes by, law enforcement in the decade after 1966. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, 21 and 22 yrs. old, were gunned down by 14 police officers as they lie sleeping in their Chicago apartment." And yes, this all occurred under the reign of terror ordered by J. Edgar Hoover, he of questionable mental stability, in his ongoing fear and hatred of civil rights activists of all stripes. This is heartbreaking to remember...
The so-called "successful" males who are thugs, know that they are just greedy narcissists and they don't like themselves, IMHO. They know they don't know the purpose of government, the difference between dictatorship and democracy or capitalism and communism or socialism. They look successful on the outside but they're rotten to the core on the inside and they know it, that is why they are so miserable and they want everyone else to even be more miserable who makes less money than them or even more money than them if that person is a free thinker or intellectual or a truth seeker. We need to have standards for anyone who can vote. A knowledge test, a character test and IQ test a common sense test, must all be given before a person can register to vote or attain any government job especially policing the populace.
Agree that we should have standards to vote, but who would formulate and administer those standards? .....and while we're discussing standards and qualifications, I believe they should be required of any candidates for public office (and parents,) as well as for doctors, teachers, police, etc.
I disagree with the categorization of any of this excrement as "recent." May I remind Mr. Hartmann that we have always had what used to be called "yellow" journalism? That the so-called "holiday" (holy day?) of Thanksgiving was inspired by news reports celebrating the massacre of indigenous people, where the word indigenous refers to the fact that they were already here? And finally (for now), that the so-called "Spanish-American" war happened after the explosion of the USS Maine in the harbor of La Habana, after which corporate journalists urged United States intervention, which led, as it has ALWAYS led in the case of this country, to the occupation and attempted annexation of ALL the countries that were fighting for their independence from Spain... including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and to the bombing and commission of atrocities against ALL of these countries.
Cuba, mi patria querida, is STILL under occupation...
Wow, I love it Ms. Brandon-Perez. Thank you for saying it. My best, most admired friend is a native of the White Earth Band of the Northern Great Lakes marge of what is now the United States of America. STILL under occupation after 500 years. Indian is a misnomer. He is an Ojibway.
That is why I used the word indigenous rather than Indian, Mr. Dobbertin. I am a descendant of taínos in Cuba, as well as Sephardim / Ladinos. The taínos were amazing fighters, and they are honored in my homeland, particularly Cacique (Chieftain) Hatuey and his wife, Caciquesa Anacaona.
Cuba under occupation, how is that? The US is leasing a part of Cuba on Guantanamo Bay, but has no say or influence in the government or the Cuban economy.
Wow, Mr. Farrar, do you really believe the evil, vicious sanctions against Cuba have no influence on their government or economy? Do you believe the same about Nicaragua? Chile? Guatemala? El Salvador? Haiti? etc. I am certain you are aware of President Monroe's contribution in this area. If the Chinese held a: "lease" on tiny Rhode Island; how would Americans feel about that?
You just changed the subject and moved the goal post, while putting words in my mouth and I don't appreciate that.
You said Cuba was under occupation. Evidently you don't know what an occupation is.
It has nothing to do with sanctions. I don't approve of the sanctions, not at all, in fact they are counter productive, they enable the rulers to blame the misery on los American's..
And the Monroe doctrine and Americas sins, to protect the financial interest of corporations, has nothing to do with sanctions and certainly not occupation.
Having said that I am sore pissed about how the "liberal media" is promoting the interests of Exxon Mobil, Coca Cola and under international corporations by financing right wing death squads, and the latest the demonization of Venezuela for the horror of Venezuela actually believing that their oll belonged to the people of Venezuela. Pissed on Exxon Mobil, who uses the CIA and our government like a tool to overthrow the country, failing that, they starve and cripple Venezuela by cutting it off from access to capital and trade.
But that is not occupation, The CIA and Mi6, overthrew Mossadegh, and installed a puppet (the Shah) which led to the Mullahcracy, Greedy fucking capitalists have ruined the world, including Africa and Asia, and these countries are tired of it and shifting their alliances to Russia and China, blithely unaware that they are going from the frying pan to the fire, and welcoming in the new colonialism of these rising super powers.
Anyway Sanctions have only caused Iran to develop it's own skills and defense industry, just like Henry VII's tariffs, forced England to become a producer nation, not an importing nation and thus by the time of Elizabeth I, a world super power.
Mr. Farrar, I was responding to the word "influence" which you used. If I seem to have conflated sanctions with occupation. My apology. That's not what I intended. I should have been clearer. It seems we actually agree on the effects of colonialism/imperialism throughout the world.
I agree, tariffs helped England's domestic economy to expand greatly during Elizabeth's four decades in power. The country was broke when she ascended. But Tariffs, English piracy, legitimate sailors like the unmatchable Cook, along with slave trade, business and technical innovations allowed the Brits to jump out ahead of most of the rest of the world. It did not hurt that England was loaded with coal, tin and oak trees either; and surrounded by bad enough weather to sink the Spanish Armada. The U.S. built its domestic industries with tariffs also. My god! Does that mean I must admit trump understood something important?
I believe it was no accident of History that Shake-Speare was producing the greatest cannon of literature in the Western World at the same time. His foster father, who reared him from his teen years on, was Sir William Cecile the "prime minister," Secretary of State and confidant to the queen most of those four decades. Cecil was also foster father to Sir Francis Walsingham. The Western World's first official, professional, government spymaster. He was also foster father to Sir Philip Sydney, the great Elizabethan poet, whom I was forced to read in my high school years. Ugh! It is no coincidence that Cecil owned the most impressive, large library in England; if not also in Europe. And this at a time when printed books were a rare, new cultural artifact. Cecil was a voracious, lifelong reader. He died as one of the wealthiest and certainly the most powerful man in England.
I see some parallels with the U.S. In the first half of the 20th century the U.S. went to the moon and Hollywood's movies became the standard of the world. All after the U.S. emerged unharmed and in fact healthy economically and triumphant with its atom bombs after WWll. Am I dreaming? Or is there a parallel?
And every time the members of the United Nations vote on sanctions, every country votes to end them; only two vote to keep them in place: the United States of America and the Zionist State of Israel.
To try to understand these people, I recommend reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings while imprisoned in Germany. He uses the term stupid but not as currently understood. He uses it in the sense it’s not malice
We all have known someone who could not resist agitating and aggravating others and who seemed bent on provoking conflict and controversy. In that it appears to be a state of mind or a habitual posture and behavior, it might qualify as a mental illness. However, it is exceedingly difficult to pin down mental illness as a separate quality exhibited by individuals which are clearly identified and apart from inclinations, attributes, and learned behaviors. I suspect that mental illnesses arise in response to social, political, and economic conditions which prevail during a given segment of time. I also suspect that the people who see chaos as a tool or methodology have experienced enormous confusion and chaos in their lives and are unable to envision a life without disruption or to see the utility and benefit of organizing structures for dealing with problems. I am a bit uncomfortable with the concept of mental illness because it is too easy to believe that it is fixed or immutable. Scientists claim, I believe correctly, that approximately 90% of cognition is unconscious (as distinguished from "subconscious". Many of the dysfunctional patterns we see are derived from unconscious process and ingrained conceptions which are learned and extremely difficult to unlearn or replace. But the best approach is to work at expanding conscious awareness and trying to reduce confusion and ignorance. Most of these people seek attention and understanding and they are not getting those things in our sick society.
Saying that "cognition" is unconscious is an oxymoron Mr. Elliott. An "unconscious process" is something altogether different. Wouldn't you say that "Conscious awareness" seems to be a redundancy? What does it mean?
Mr. D., It did not occur to me that I should refer you to my posting on Substack until after I had gone to bed. I haven't quite figured out how Substack is organized but I believe that you can go to their site and read my chapter under my name free of charge as a visitor. The title is "Embodied Knowledge: What it is and Why it is Phenomenally Important". I just posted it a few days ago. It is a very thorough discussion of my understanding of knowledge, which is the cognition one has created in the course of one's life encompassing much more than just linguistic symbols or information. I would appreciate any feedback. If I have gotten anything wrong or if you disagree with my analysis, I would like to know. This is a topic that is near and dear and that is of utmost importance to the preservation of democracy. Now, maybe I can sleep. (The chapter was selected from my unpublished book manuscript).
I suppose I should use the disingenuous line used by the Republicans and say that I am not a scientist. You may know more about that topic than I do. However, from my reading and understanding of the work of neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, I believe that cognition is commonly defined as either or both conscious awareness, which has signifiers that are linear and articulable in real time, and unconscious process, which does not involve articulated thoughts, language, or linear conceptualizations. All cognition utilizes the physical elements of mind and body, such as synapses, nerves, neurochemicals, glia, etc., and ordinarily there are always simultaneous and indistinguishable processes on two or more levels which include emotional and other sensations, perceptions, intuitive and reflexive elements, memory, and data processing. The cognitive/emotional divide is an erroneous split that causes myriad problems and cannot exist in a healthy human being.
I’m not sure what you are arguing or disputing. I think that you are correct that “conscious awareness” is redundant. My use of the term ostensibly reflects the typical view that we have motivations, beliefs, feelings or emotions, and possibly other things going on which have an automatic or habitual nature and are only understood and changed when we identify them with some precision or accurate analysis. It certainly is possible to make an effort to become more aware of how we have been affected by experiences and perceptions and to do our best to choose an alternative response. Encouraging or teaching others to access their innermost cognition is the job, in part, of educators. We are seeing the results of their failure in the people who exhibit a need for chaos, in my opinion. I hope that helps to clarify my meaning.
I understand the "genesis" (meaning origin) of the chaos. Everything ends up like it starts for life itself comes full circle: "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." The United States began through chaos and violence, and so it shall end with same. Whenever that is.
Rohn, I certainly understand your analysis and don't disagree. Many civilizations have probably ended or devolved in this direction. I am also hoping for something like an evolution of consciousness regarding the laws of human nature. Human beings seem to thrive in a culture of affection and acceptance, the feeling of belonging and of being important as an individual also.
When relational needs are not met humans become angry, envious, and that can lead to interpersonal violence. Our existential need to work together on issues like the climate catastrophe requires that we evolve methods of resolving interpersonal and inter-group conflict in nonviolent ways. Methods exist for learning how to do this and more and more people are attracted to learning these methods. I cast my lot with them…🙏♥️
Thank you, Ms. Taylor for such a thoughtful and caring comment. However, I have more down to earth matters to concern myself with at the moment. And though I imagine you have no frame of reference respect that my world is not yours. https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/jacksonville-he-wanted-to-kill-niggers
Rohn, your anger and resentment is very much on display, via your postings here and on susbstck.
Your rants are counter productive. And you do come across as a black version of Timothy McVeigh.
This country was built on the genocide of the natives and the enslavement of Africans, and instead of admitting the sins, and remedying the situation, they exaggerate the situation, by being even more exclusivist in less obvious ways, except for those that suffer from systemic and institutional classism and it's subset Racism.
Fret not Rohn, The bill for all of the greed and pollution, classism and racism is coming due.
Venting the spleen is cathartic. I understand, pent up anger and outrage, needs to be manifested externally, and apparently that is what the Maggots, KKK, Fraternal Order of Police and Constitutional Sheriffs, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Boogaloo boys are all about, venting their spleens. Just like Timothy McVeigh vented his anger, resentments did when he bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.
You are right, Mr. Kenyatta, that your world is not mine and it is fine with me to be reminded of that. I am in no way speaking down to anyone, especially you, whom I admire. I believe you call in to Thom's show and I always appreciate when you do.
Thank you, Ma'am. You possess a really positive aura that transcends the amorphous mass of electronic nothingness called "cyberspace." Thom is a man that I could not, possibly, be more different from in terms of politics (because I have no politics of a partisan sort) but he is one of my intellectual gurus. Nothing in this world intoxicates me like sheer intellectual horsepower. He has taught me much as a writer and intellectual.
Thank you for your kind words, sir, and ditto and Amen regarding Thom! Let's all keep on collectively honing our ability to limit the destructive effects of those who are lost in the abyss of hatred.
Amen sister, amen (and Awomen). I just fear it is much too late and pray, for the sake of my children (all girls) that I am wrong. I am intimately connected to the Schwartsgeist, the Black Intelligentsia. We move surreptitiously; you cannot see us and, for now, you can not hear us...but we exist. As such, I know things the general public does not and this is one time in my life where I pray to be wrong.
But, I doubt it.
I also want to, publicly, thank you for your subscription to LookingNWords. The podcast is coming...soon and will be free to paid subscribers. Know that I am a dissident, a heretic but I promise you one thing, and one thing only, and that is the gift of thought. I was trained in law and I deal in facts, no matter how uncomfortable. You may recoil at my presentation, at times, but you will never find my facts to be flawed; 'cause facts, is facts.
I was rather unsurprised to find that you were a psychologist...I felt it. Ergo my previous comment about transcendence. I, very much, look forward to more interactions with you for I am already fascinated by your blatantly obvious intellect.
Have you actually read, front to cover, the Turner Diaries, it is the bible of the racist right, and their numbers are astronomical compared to the hey day of the KKK or Silver Shirts.
We know them as Trump humpers.
I suggest you read the Diaries until the end, this is the end that these white racist nationalists are working towards, and Trump has given them legitimacy.
William, I don't know if I could tolerate reading even one sentence of the Turner Diaries but I appreciate being reminded of this infection of the mind. If delusions are beliefs that help a person retain a fundamental sense of themselves, like the foundation of a house supports the entire structure, then the delusion of white, male supremacy functions to support the kind of people who, to the detriment of the rest of us, derive their sense of selfhood from the color of their skin and their gender.
The book, RISING OUT OF HATRED, by Eli Saslow, chronicles the trajectory of Derek Black's awakening from a KKK promoter to someone who was able to repudiate supremacist beliefs.
I'm not naïve but I look for signs of transformation… I need to know that they exist. 🌸
I know what you mean, but for every Derek there are a hundred thousand true believers.
A reformed enlightened racist does not change a movement or mentality, anymore than an atheist, such as myself, can porselytize believers. I don't even try, cause I don't care, but believers scare the scheiss out of me, the majority of the right wing are believers.
I hear you, brother...and I agree that it appears as if we're outnumbered. It's true that a relatively small number of insane guys can get a lot of others to commit heinous acts of violence through fear and intimidation. :(
But I support men like you and the values you embody. You spread these values daily, without knowing it, just by being who and how you are. I trust in that.
Thanks but finding people (not just men) who are able and willing to do thinking for themselves, is a chore.
There are beliefs and opinions.
Beliefs are almost impossible to discard or change without doing harm to a persons sense of self, their identity,their ego, and When they do shed a belief, like a snake sheds its skin, the person usually does so after adopting another belief system. And to convince themselves they become radicalized, more a true believer than one born into such a family, radicalization caused by cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is manifested physically, awkwardness, trembling, sweating, nervousness
Opinions can be arrived at or acquired. An acquired opinion is the typical Fox Viewer or one who listens exclusively to hate radio, or 4 CHAN, 8 CHAN OR OANN, Town hall or any of the thousands of right wing, and even extreme left websites.
Opinions arrived at are entirely different from beliefs or acquired opinions.
These opinions require thought, analysis and critical reasoning skills. No bandwagon effect, no being swayed by "authorities" (always question authority, sectarian or secular), but that takes time and mental effort
Yes, thank you Mr. Kenyatta. The genesis of all empires spring from violence. It is just as certain that all empires come to an end. Where are the Mongols? Hittites? Romans? Babylonians? etc. Where lies the end of the American Empire? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end?
For CERTAIN! And, despite appearances, I am less gleeful about it than I should be. But, what goes around, comes around for it is the universal order of things.
The Mongol Horde may have fallen apart (from what I have read) more from the death of its leader, Kublai Kahn, than from any violence, within or without.
The Spartans come to mind. They were so violent and so militaristic, and so bereft of human emotions, they had to hire people to write their war glory stories and poetry. "Another reason for the diminution in the number of citizens was that increasingly many Spartan citizens could no longer afford to pay their dues in the agoge system as that society became increasingly divided between rich and poor. (https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_Caused_the_Decline_of_Sparta#google_vignette)
Sparta's growing wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, which meant that fewer men could meet the financial demands of a citizen....The premium placed on stability and order meant that the Spartans distrusted change, and this conservatism meant that Sparta could not change to meet the challenges it faced. "
Does this sound familiar? A violent and militaristic state, constantly increasing financial demands of citizens on behalf of a wealthy minority while destroying the country from within due to an unwillingness to change? A country that, due to ingrained conservatism, cannot meet its challenges?
Vandalism is likely a personality disorder, but in the context of the current essay, it is likely aimed at weakening confidence in US Democratic governance. For all of my 76 years on the planet, I have watched as the GOP has increasingly focused on arguing that government should be run more like a business, and that is why there is no law and order, and too much regulation of business in a "free" country. History has pointed out that the "chaos" Tomm talks about is the first stage of creating momentum for a fascist takeover. They vandalize then blame it on minorities that are "out of control" like Black American violence (esp BLM protests), but also Jewish control of the economy, Hispanic "illegal immigrants invading the USA." and so forth. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler nor Trump are examples of very bright people, but they are ruthless and crave autocratic rule. Ironically, as Prof R.O. Paxton has pointed out, they have no vision for governing which is why hegemonic wars are a convenient distraction to create national unity and a perverted sense of patriotism.
One thing that I hope Thom will get to eventually is that their antisocial violent behavior has highlighted weaknesses in our judicial and law-enforcement systems. Trump plays the courts like a harp because he as been well instructed in how to game the system for profit. He has just taken it one step further and has games the system for power. Of course, as I just noted, he really has no vision for governance - it is just tear down the radical socialist democratic system and replace it with an autocratic CEO - Trump, or DeSantis, or Ramaswamy, or....
Thom, a lot of people who have a need to create chaos are driven by less observable, unconscious processes like old fury that is being displaced onto contemporary scapegoats. This is a more psychological way of understanding people then a description of their overt behavior. In his book, DISORDERED MINDS - How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, Ian Hughes describes rulers like Hitler and Stalin as having a drive for absolute power over others and no conscience about how they achieve that end. These SOCIOPATHS are a small percentage of the population but they are attracted to positions of power in places like police departments, big business, and politics. As adolescents and young adults these, mostly men, join gangs and militant groups to find a sense of belonging and empowerment. They spread chaos to express their childhood rage at authority and assert their dominance. This is how they reassure themselves that they are powerful, unlike how they felt as children. Trump and Putin crave dominance and have no conscience about how that is achieved. So do many of the people who align with them.
Ms. Taylor, don't you think we might better concentrate our attention on the kinds of social organizations which give us the people you describe, the organization which enables them: Hitler, Stalin, Putin, "these, mostly men" who "join gangs and militant groups" and forget about "unconscious" motives and behavior? When you think about it doesn't the term "unconscious" behavior have an element of an oxymoron about it?
Professor, what social organizations are you referring to, that give us people who operate without conscience? I tend to believe that the most formative social organization in cultures that produce a certain percentage of sociopathic, malignant narcissists in Western cultures, is the nuclear family. However, I completely agree that there are widening circles of influence as a baby becomes a toddler, then a child, adolescent, and adult. In all of these developmental stages the culture (including the nuclear family) continues to exert influence over the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of its members, including whatever social organizations you had in mind...Absolutely, yes.
The reason I describe unconscious processes is that the effects of the cultural surround, including the nuclear family, have their greatest effect in the earliest years, then fall into the background of consciousness. Paradoxically, the more unconscious a belief is, such as "big boys don't cry," the stronger the hold it has over the individual or culture. These beliefs and attitudes, over time, become unassailable "truths." Their influence is almost total until a critical mass of people in that culture consciously challenge it.
I endorse your approach, if I have it right, of drawing the behaviors and social phenomena Thom (and Cambridge) observe back into the context of previously identified psychologies.
I'm not convinced that we need a new "agents of chaos" category, or whether it's useful .
I find this extremely helpful and clarifying. If the liberal media does nothing to vanquish the myth of the BLM riots and then the Dems acquiesce in increasingly militarized policing there’s no way out of this disaster. The Rightwing media have successfully spread this racist idea of “law and order” while sowing chaos and violence.it’s Orwellian: violence is law, chaos is order. Strenuous and intelligent opposition to that strategy has been lacking. As we saw in the ridiculous montage at the 2020 Dem convention attempting to assuage the protestors while doubling down on police. How can we widely propagate your points here?
What liberal media? Free Speech TV? Democracy now, because for the life of me, I can't think of any liberal media, maybe some monthly publications, but not a media on television.
If you get your info from satellite or cable, you are getting spin from corporate media, even MSNBC and corporate media is center right to extreme right.
Blogs and substack are not liberal media.
I guess one could assert that internet news letters are media, but hardly, because most if not all
have a relatively small level of subscription.
Media like NYT and WAPO, are not liberal either, They are corporate, and whatever objective reporting is done by them, it is undone by their Opinion page, which too often are hard right of center, even Trumpist.
And the media should be judged not by just what it prints, but what it chooses not to print, like Global Warming, but that would upset the advertisers and share holders
Thom, you gave people a lot to think about.
I knew of this element long ago. I was an MP in Germany, and we worked with the Polizei. Their police had college educations and great training. One of them explained to me that when the neo-nazis demonstrated, there would be an overwhelming number of anti-nazi counter-demonstrators and it was intense. He went on to say the third faction is the real problem. His description was that they only wanted to "break windows and steal TVs".
This is primarily males, but it is not exclusive. The anarchy folks have been lurking around forever looking for opportunity---often criminal opportunities.
The destruction of property facilitates the theft in some cases. It can involve political and anti-social types, who might feel a release.of the pressure they perceive. Some others simply think it's fun and take great pleasure in it without regard for the misery, pain and death that can result. Criminal, perverse, and damaged people are in the mix. They absolutely have various mental conditions, and we need to continue to study how they got there and how to help them.
Mr. /Ms. alis, fascinating that you worked mit der Polizi. I have nothing against giving der Polizi good education and training. But in the end what you end up with is a cop who says sir as he bashes my head with a night stick. Cops are employees who know what their boss requires of them.
WTF Professor Dobbertin!
I was hoping to learn something from you.
Who are these agents of chaos? I have found them to be losers. Most of them can't support themselves and can't manage any kind of a relationship with a woman or a man. Most of them are men without a decent job and with a criminal record and with drug problems. There are so many displaced males out there, they are envious and jealous of those that can actually have fun, so they go out of their way to make everybody miserable, not just themselves. About a third of Americans in my opinion at least should be locked up in a mental institution, but we don't have the capabilities to do that.
The Nazis or GOP fascists, whatever you want to call them, promise them that they will be put in the hierarchy if they use their antisocial behavior for the billionaires. It is all they have to live for. The family unit has created these monsters and the fascist will use them to bully the humans around with. That is why in my opinion the religions and the elites have worked together for thousands of years in order to reign terror and keep control of the humans by supporting the family unit.
During the WTO riots in Seattle a few years back, and frankly since then, when ever there is a protest, dudes dressed in black show up and all they do is break windows and destroy property and they are never arrested, just as in Portland. Agents Provocateurs, is what they are.
Some think that they are protected and encouraged by government, others that they are right wingers, and others that they are anarchists, which are neither left nor right.
One thing to consider is that are all dressed in a uniform, from boots to black clothing and face covering.
....and the MAGAs and the actual provocateurs want the public to believe that those hooligans and terrorists are ANTIFA.
Yep, except there is no organization named antifa, some wag shortened antifascist to antifa because they thought it was cool, turned out to be a bad propaganda manuever, as it disguises that the word is short for antifascists, and though they are reluctant to declare themselves fascists, they have no problem in accusing antifascists of the crimes they are guilty of.
And then there is Trump who delights in pulling every epithet of evil out of the basement and hurl them at those who are actually antifascists.
Both groups, the agent provocateurs and the anarchists who have no affiliation to either party or raised in the family unit.
Yep.
Were raised in the family unit
Were raised in the rigidly patriarchal family unit.
Hard to pick a place to jump in, but humbly reflecting on observed behavior: moms with kids in laundromats. Little girl dutifully helping Mom. Brother careening around the place wildly, ignored by Mom, who is complaining to little girl about what a slob Dad is, always expecting to be picked-up after. Like Ms. Taylor says: unconsciously training her son.
Good insight. I did most of the housework from the age of about seven; my brothers did none. My father said, "They're boys" and that excused them from all the work.
Half of families don't even have a father nowadays. The mails grow up emulating TV characters who are thugs. If they show signs of being humane in any way, they get the stuffings beat out of them and called it rhymes with maggot. Intellectuals have a hard time in this nation if you're male. Everything we do is right or wrong, moral or immoral positive or negative. In order to be intelligent you have to be right and you have to care if you are right or wrong. Therein lies the problem.
And what do you attribute this to?
Not all of us.
Good reply Mr. Farrar, there is a hint of the proper direction to look found in your words.
I also agree completely, that for thousands of years boys have been trained to be aggressive in a way that serves the ruling elite.
I have always seen this as the cruelest form of emotional and physical abuse of boys… They are emotionally killed off in earliest childhood and then trained to physically kill one another as they get older. To create a more peaceful and harmonious world we need to lift the taboo on tenderness in the rearing of boys.
Once upon a time, like when I was a kid, women, especially white middle-class-and-up women, were trained in certain ways too. Individually, in groups, and in whole movements we fought successfully to expand the options for people of our sex. This often had the effect of expanding options for the other sex too. Why haven't we seen a comparable movement to "lift the taboo on tenderness in the rearing of boys"?
I suggest it's because what we're dealing with here isn't a taboo: it's the price of admission to a privileged place in the patriarchal system. No matter where a man is in the social structure, he ranks higher than women at the same level. That's a powerful incentive to play the game the way he's taught to play it. And some men, especially older white men, seem to be very angry and/or depressed that their privileged place (for which they have indeed sacrificed so much, whether they realize it or not) is being questioned.
I was struck long ago by something the poet-essayist Adrienne Rich wrote in _Of Woman Born_: "If I could have one wish for my own sons, it is that they should have the courage of women. I mean by this something very concrete and precise: the courage I have seen in women who, in their private and public lives, both in the interior world of their dreaming, thinking, and creating, and the outer world of patriarchy, are taking greater and greater risks, both psychic and physical, in the evolution of a new vision." I typed this on a small piece of paper, folded it up, and carried it in my wallet until it finally came apart at the creases.
Susan, I agree completely with your observation that, for boys, a certain set of attitudes and character traits is "...the price of admission to a privileged place in the patriarchal system." The taboo on tenderness of which I speak is most obvious in the early messages many boy babies (still) receive regarding how they're expected to behave, what human characteristics they're expected to value, and who they end up emulating. This is how, generation after generation, a certain definition of "masculinity" has become a global norm. I get where Adrienne Rich is coming from, and I think that as child rearing practices continue to evolve, lifting the taboo on tenderness towards little boys, and permitting little girls to assert their individuality, that boys AND girls, are repudiating the silos of gender they've been restricted to.
Well said Ms. Sturgis.
My gosh, "thousands of years"? Are you even remotely aware of the evidence about the wide variations in the rearing of males which is found in the literature of Cultural Anthropology? Apparently not.
Thanks for bringing that up, Professor Dobbertin. I am aware, and very interested in, how boys have been reared in other cultures. It seems that our adult personalities both masculine and feminine, are largely shaped by the messages we receive growing up in our specific cultures. Would you agree with that?
Unquestionably, yes, largely during our youth, but not entirely. People can and do change during their adult years.
Take that Gerald! Thanks Madeline.
I completely agree...it is possible for people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to continue to evolve, especially if there is support for doing so within that person's inner circle of significant others or within the larger culture. That's one of the aspects of life that is generally prohibited in totalitarian regimes, including family configurations that operate like dictatorships...only obedience to authority is tolerated. :(
Trouble is, this "extreme" behavior is on the continuum of what is widely considered in our society acceptable male behavior. Maybe "most of them can't support themselves" (etc.), but some of them are running hedge funds, real estate empires, and corporations and even managing relationships, though those relationships are often seriously dysfunctional.
I used to attend a variety of "investment" seminars and conventions. Mostly men promoters, and I was "woke" enough to be offended when they would joke, haha, about don't give your credit card to your wife/girlfriend after you made all that money. Cretins. But I also overheard the "suits" in the restaurants, and they really boosted each other about the government interfering with their CONTROL over their women.
Ugh. I have never moved in those circles but I am not surprised.
Yes and some are 'successfully" advising presidential hopefuls (Roger Stone), and
"serving" as Chief Strategist to the actual president (Steve Bannon) and then running a daily extremest internet station.
Truth. They are high-level chaos agents and IMO they're more culpable than the ones who are mainly doing it for the adrenaline rush. They've gone beyond chaos agent to active chaos agitators.
So true.
Bob, I absolutely agree with you. Disaffected men were once neglected, abused, unloved little boys. They have ancient reasons for being enraged and for needing to express that fury in the present moment. These are men who were deeply hurt and humiliated in earliest childhood when they had no power to affect the people who were hurting them. Because of these intense, unresolved feelings they don't form secure relationships throughout their development, and arrive in adolescence and early adulthood with pain and rage chronically coursing through their veins. They either join militant groups and gangs to feel some sense of affiliation or they remain extremely isolated and their suffering continues until they explode in the mass shootings we see taking place every day. As a society we need to raise boys with a greater awareness of their longing for love and their need for tenderness in early childhood. We need to stop ridiculing and humiliating little boys for what are normal, human needs for affection and comfort when life is hard. ♥️♥️♥️
Ms. Taylor. "their suffering continues until they explode in mass shootings.."
Let us please be careful about the metaphor of human beings exploding. It has misled many of us for a long time. I, for one, am 81 yrs. and I remember hearing that metaphor all my life. It explains nothing. Human beings are not pressure cookers or bombs about to explode. Metaphors serve a good use from time to time. But we must be cautious about how we use them. Metaphors are not an acceptable substitute for analysis.
Furthermore, those mass killers, just like serial killers, usually tell us what their motives were/are on blogs, in their conversations with friends, and in suicide notes left behind, found by the police. Are you familiar with the intelligent, well educated Unabomber? Ted Kaszinski had a Phd. in mathematics. He stated his case quite clearly, in writing. The NYTimes, somewhat reluctantly, published his "manifesto."
These people are overwhelmingly white males. They hate others whom they believe are replacing them. Remember "Jews will not replace us?" Hatred of jews is ancient among Christians and Muslims. Caucasian hatred of Negros is as old as slavery in the Americas: 400 years. More White Americans should read THE 1619 PROJECT.
Would you agree that the males that commit suicide implode and the males that kill a whole bunch of people they don't even know explode? Because of unlimited greed, religion and the family unit!
Mr. Johnson "about a third of Americans should be locked up in a mental institution"?????? Think about this for a minute! Who or what is normal or acceptable in their behavior? And who should decide what is normal or acceptable? Who should have the power to lock them up?
I'm thinking of all the different religions that believe fairy tales to be truthful with no evidence. They are delusional and they make up about 85% of the population.
I see
The broken of character feed on our attention and reaction. Abandon them.
The hostile adversaries of democracy - both foreign and domestic - feed on the innocent, the ignorant, and the arrogant. Starve them.
Leave behind the parasitic antisocial duopoly that is "X" and Facebook (and of course other lesser platforms with similar algorithms). They have proven to be unquestionably toxic to civility, logic, and democracy.
They are a breeding ground of disorder, by intent. They sell us on connectedness and the sharing of free thought. They deliver us division and the proliferation of chaos. Walk away.
Our nearly monolithic system of virtual information sharing is unsustainable in its own right, as chaos is by definition unstable. The damage this inflicts upon the real world is no different - we are living in its fruition.
Social media will need to be realized in smaller, purpose-based forums - such as the Hartmann Report - to remain legitimate and relevant.
Mr. Notabot, I think you are on the correct path. Please keep going on it. See where it leads.
Good comment. I walked away from FB three years ago. I did lose touch with some friends and had others give me a hard time about it. I miss out on parties, etc., but Neve really enjoyed much of that anyway. I don't frequent X, but do occasionally go and read something referenced there. It isn't just social media. The main stream media has been bought up by billionaires (even the supposed "left-leaning" sources,) and consolidated to heck and back. I used to admire, for example, The Washington Post, but they have turned right, using subtle methods to make it seem like they are still the good old Post and that their new owner Bezos doesn't interfere. They feature an ever-increasing parade of right-wing articles, often full of falsehoods, written by people who are lousy journalists. The Post lets a lot of criticism go on in their forums, but say something that gets under their skin (a serious point) on a forum and out goes your comment and then, out you go for a while. I had to pay for a year, but have cancelled any future subscription. I have extreme distaste for Trump, but agree with him on one point: the media is not our friend. The Fourth Estate is broken.
These people are a lot like the Joker in, "The Dark Knight." Enjoying the disruption and cruelty for its own sake. It's widespread -- what's fueling it? A feeling of being on the outside of what's going on -- and pure evil, the desire to destroy.
yes, Mr. Salay: "A feeling of being on the outside." You nailed it.
Back in the heyday of the antiwar movement, late '60s and early '71s, I lived in D.C. and was a peacekeeper (we were called marshals then) at quite a few marches and demonstrations, some of them very large (like the November 1969 Mobe march on Washington). Part of our function was to keep the "chaos agents" away from not only the demonstrators and marchers but from the police. They didn't call themselves chaos agents, of course: if they claimed an organizational affiliation it would have been to a far-lefty group like Progressive Labor or the Spartacist League. They were often fans of Chairman Mao, especially his dictum about political power coming from the barrel of a gun. I knew a few guys who believed that police brutality radicalized people so they'd do stuff like throw rocks at the police in an attempt to make them beat up the demonstrators. (This was why we tried to establish cordial relationships with the police before the demo got underway.) They were overwhelmingly male and almost as overwhelmingly white.
Much more recently, some of what flies under the "antifa" banner has reminded me a lot of those antiwar experiences. For some, fighting fascism becomes a matter of brawling with individual fascists. It's rumbling for the sake of rumbling, Sharks vs. Jets (but without the soundtrack). And as far as I can tell, it's still mostly a guy thing.
Well, there are a fair number of women in the MAGA movement, and a goodly number of them support/promote/commit violence. Ashley Babbitt comes to mind. It IS mostly white men, but the are encouraged and supported by the women in their movement. We see it all over the country, "Karens" threatening people, slapping them, taking phones, etc.
In both 2016 and 2020 more than half of all white women voters voted for Trump. They're not all MAGAs by any means, but it's still an important data point. I'm pretty sure that nearly all of them are straight and identify with the interests of "their" men, even when their own interests conflict. And yes, the racist "Karens" get a lot of press -- whether they vote or not I don't know -- but let's not forget that virtually all of the "people" who show up with semiautomatic weapons and kill people of color are men.
Testosterone - the philosopher Ken Wilbur calls it the "fu*k it or kill it" hormone. We don't teach young men any way to manage it, and, in fact, encourage them (through violent sports such as football) to express it.
Love the shout-out to Ken Wilbur. Maybe I will get my library unpacked before I die.....
Ms. Sturgis, I too was at that "march on Washington" However, I remember it as a march on the Pentagon and against the immoral, shameful, Viet Nam war. Our reasons were rational and moral. I can still see Abby Hoffman sitting in the middle of the Pentagon's parking area Murmuring aaoouwm as he and his buddies "levitated" the Pentagon. It was hilarious. But had no power. The real power, however was in the barrels of the M1 Garand rifles pointed at my chest by the soldiers surrounding the Pentagon's entrance. I also still remember the young person who inserted a flower into the barrel of a soldier's rifle. Then too, I recall and filmed the U.S. Marshals forming an armed protective ring around the Fascists who held up signs proclaiming "America is your freedom castle. Protect it against the godless Communists."
This was not a "guy thing." The courageous demonstrator who inserted the flower was a female.
Gerald, I like hearing your reminiscences regarding the anti-war years of the '60's and early 70's. I think Susanna was asserting that war is a "guy-thing." Competition, organized killing, etc. If a young woman placed a flower into the barrel of a gun that would be somewhat of a typical "girl-thing," don't you think? The photo I remember was of a young MAN placing a flower into the barrel of gun pointed at him...THAT made an impression on me as he seemed to be breaking ranks with what the dominant culture typically expected of men. I also remember the young man who stood before the huge tank in Tianenmen Square some years later. THAT'S a photo I won't forget.
No, I was not saying that war is guy thing, although it is. If you'll read my OP again, you'll see that I was talking specifically about the "chaos agents" on the fringes of the the antiwar movement in the late '60s and comparing them to *some* of "what flies under the 'antifa' banner." Thom's column is about chaos agents, so that's what I focused on. Chaos agents thrive on the fringes of large gatherings. And until someone provides solid evidence to the contrary, I'll continue to believe that they're overwhelmingly male.
Thanks for clarifying that, Susanna, and my apologies for getting it wrong.
It seems to me that the "chaos agents who thrive on the fringes of large gatherings" are performing an act of misdirection. They seem to want to undermine the legitimacy of peaceful protests in order to discredit the perspective and the grievances of the marchers. It feels as if they want to confuse the issue in order to disrupt the flow of society's empathy for the cause for which the march was organized.
They not only sow chaos in the form of physical violence but chaos in our minds as well. Their ultimate objective is to confuse the media and the message of the marchers. To me they are like an envious older sibling who bullies the younger one, then complains bitterly when the mom or dad empathizes with the child who's being bullied. They scream, "But you didn't see what he did to me! I'm the one who's getting hurt here, don't empathize with him! He's not Mr. goody two shoes… I'm the one you should care about, not him!"
People like Trump, abusive men, and cult leaders always impose their way of seeing the world on susceptible others and they can't stand it when anyone else gets attention or compassion. They need all the attention and all of the compassion… Only them and no one else has a legitimate gripe.
Just in general, I'm not sure that most of the chaos agents have motives the way we understand motive, as in "cause -> effect." When they do, like the far-lefties I used to see at big rallies and demos, their explanations are flawed at best. "We'll provoke the police to beat up the demonstrators and that will prove that the state is fascist and they should join us"? That's far-fetched enough to be ludicrous. It makes more sense to see chaos itself as the motive and "what happens next" as of minimal concern.
I appreciate your perspective about seeing chaos itself as the motive. It might actually be that in the minds of the guys who are sowing physical chaos, that's their only conscious goal. However, just to clarify, I wasn't talking about conscious or purposeful motives that chaos agents, themselves, might articulate but rather underlying, even unconscious motives that can sometimes be deduced by the outcome of their actions.
I am likening this to disinformation campaigns, the goal of which is to sow doubt in the mind of the public, or misdirection campaigns that point the finger back at the other side and hurl the descriptor back at them. The goal, conscious or not is to sow chaos in the mind of the other side, to confuse the narrative and even invert it entirely, Orwellian style.
Gerald, I believe you're remembering a different march: the march on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. The one Norman Mailer wrote about in _Armies of the Night_ It was big, but not as big as the November 15, 1969, march, which was the culmination of three days of antiwar action, including the intensely moving procession of people from Arlington Cemetery to the White House. Each one carried a placard bearing the name of a service member who'd died in Vietnam. These were deposited in coffins in front of the White House. I wasn't able to participate in that because I was helping house and feed out-of-town demonstrators at Georgetown U., where I was a freshman.
If we want to understand these "agents of chaos," we need to look at how they were raised. From the Wiki: "Researchers estimate that 85% of American youth have been physically punished by parents during childhood or adolescence." People do to their children things that would earn them serious time in prison if they did it to another adult, and unless the kid ends up in the hospital, or are so severely injured a teacher has to report, there are rarely consequences. Children are not infrequently whipped to death or otherwise killed by "punishment" in the USA. More often, they are whipped into trauma and later suffer PTSD (I speak from experience.) In this case, it is mothers doing the lion's share of the violence, and it may contribute to the generalized hatred and fear of women - misogyny.
Corporal punishment leads to a well of anger that eventually becomes generalized and is visited outward into the community, especially by males due to the tendency of violence that comes with testosterone. We don't talk about the link between widespread violence and our religiously-sanctioned abuse of children. We don't ask questions or keep much in the way of data, because people prefer to turn a blind eye. It was common, growing up in the 50's, to hear religious leaders talk about "breaking the spirit" of a child to "bring them to God." Everyone beat their kids, and as a child of seven, I watched a mother, in public, pull a switch from a Weeping Willow and whip her 2-year old to welts, with him screaming, for splashing the other kids in the kiddie pool. Nobody interfered. Another time, also at a very young age, I saw a mother take her daughter into the basement of the church and whipped her with a patent leather belt - the reason? The little girl squirmed during the sermon. Again, nobody interfered. I would be willing to bet most of these chaos agents are survivors of childhood abuse. Here's a short and interesting read:
https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/research/corporal_punishment.html
Hurt people....hurt people and until we learn this lesson, our problem with random violence will continue.
Exactly right, SuZie.
For centuries in Europe, the belief was that if you didn't "break the will" of the child, he or she wouldn't get into heaven. A nice rationalization. Beating "the hell" out of your kids was rewarded by the culture, and NOT doing so was seen as parental neglect. The Church encouraged the behavior of displacing your pent up rage onto a helpless child. It was also OK for men to beat women. The parents who beat children weren't considered sinful for doing so...it was the child who'd been sinful and deserved the beating.
Christopher Columbus, when he got to the "New World" wrote that he was horrified that Native Americans didn't beat their children...how would they get into heaven if they hadn't been beaten?
Freud raised the issue of child sexual abuse, specifically, in 1896 and his colleagues shunned him. Eighteen months later he retracted that theory and never returned to it, even though others did, with great difficulty. The women's movement in the 1960's returned attention to the very real fact of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of children, and Alice Miller, the Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote extensively about how parents can use their children in any way that suits them with little or no fear of interference. Her explanation of what made Hitler such a sociopathic murderer includes descriptions of how his father beat him mercilessly, on a daily basis, once almost killing him.
James Gilligan, an expert on the relationship between violence experienced in childhood and criminal behavior as an adult adds one more element...the mental cruelty of verbal ridicule and humiliation meted out by the person who is also physically abusing the child.
So yes, hidden violence in child rearing causes pain, powerlessness, revenge fantasies and ultimately a repetition of displaced rage generation after generation, making ours a very violent culture, perpetually.
I've read Alice Miller's works as well as others documenting much of what you've said. Mary Trump has written about the neglect and both physical and emotional abuse visited upon Donald Trump by his parents.
Child abuse in the USA is saturated with "the banality of evil." I had a typical Kansas upbringing by an alcoholic, lapsed-Catholic step-father and a Southern Baptist mother, which meant I was beaten regularly, as were my siblings. There was nothing outrageous about this to the community. Everyone I knew beat their kids. We lived in abject poverty (not even any shampoo for our hair or soap for our bodies) and know that poverty can breed violence, but even kids from "good" homes were beaten. My parents weren't uniformly bad and, though it has taken a lifetime, I have been able to develop some degree of compassion for them.
Girls were required to wear skirts to school; pants were not allowed. It was common to see welts across the back legs of girls. Boys probably had the same welts, but they were covered. Uncovered welts, though, added to the shame. It was a public announcement that girls (and by extension, women) could be beaten without consequence. This continued through high school.
My poor family. We were five siblings I was the eldest and was often beaten because the others didn't behave. My next-in-age brother devolved into mental illness, the meds for which killed him in his early forties. My next down brother denies much of the abuse, but is afflicted with a myriad of physical problems, including eczema and psoriasis, heart problems and Bell's palsy. He, of course, passed the abuse down and his eldest son recently died of alcoholism and his daughter is a hard-core addict. His emotional life, until he was past 60, was (like the rest of us) a mess, with multiple marriages, affairs, etc. Next is a sister who has been disabled for much of her life and in pain with numerous auto-immune problems, breast cancer and other medical issues. Finally, my baby sister also deals with many physical problems (and advanced cancer.) As for me, that's a long story for another time, but let's just say there's been a lot of chaos, leading to an almost monastic life.
I have two children and I did not beat or neglect them, so the chain CAN be broken, if one is willing to do the work. I left their father because he wanted to beat them, as he was beaten. I wasn't having it.
Google "spanking" and there are 316 MILLION hits. Look at the incidence of back and hip pain in middle aged and older people - I believe this a direct result of the beatings.
So sad. I grew up in the shadow of Dad's belt and Granddad's "famous" stropping strap hanging on the back of the door in the grandparents' bathroom. My Mom was the boss of the punishment, and I have a vague idea that my Dad wasn't really into it. Would be more comfort if I thought he liked me much, anyway. I'll never forget the impact of reading Alice Miller's account of the parent "teaching" the child to "share" by insisting on an adult sized bite of the child's ice cream! Lordy, did that ring a bell! My sympathies with your "poor family." I have never regretted not reproducing: maybe sound instincts not to continue bad traditions I ultimately have never "come to grips with," but certainly only began to grapple with as fertility was fading anyway.
Thank you for sharing your story, Mmerose. The more we share, the more we learn and the more we can resist.
Gosh, Mmerose...it hurts to hear that you endured beatings with a leather strap. I'm so sorry you had to endure that horrible injustice. You are another person, like SuZie, who was determined to not repeat these patterns of abuse and you're to be commended, as is she, for managing to break the cycle.
I think what we're saying here is that it's probable that young men who become agents of chaos, either at the fringes of peaceful marches or at the head of a political party that's become a cult, are people who've been raised with physical, sexual, or emotional abuse to such an extent, that it's left them with a deep, inner rage, the origins of which remain out of awareness. Precisely because the original reason for their vengeful anger is out of awareness, it becomes more likely that it will find a "justifiable" outlet in the current moment. That solves several issues...they have a "legitimate" target for their fury, they get to 'rage against the machine,' of authority, and they never have to confront their real parents or their real pain, both of which are scary things to do.
Wow, SuZie...my heart goes out to you, and thanks so much for sharing. You're one of the amazing people who's been through a violent upbringing but made sure you didn't repeat it with your own children. You even divorced your husband over that issue. Your posts are full of wisdom so you've obviously gained a lot due to your own search to understand your family.
I believe the "agents of chaos" of which Thom speaks on this thread, are men who grew up such as you describe. They must definitely be hurt people who hurt people, because of stored rage and a determination to oppose "authority" and belatedly vindicate the powerless child they used to be.
Thank you. I probably erred on the side of sharing "too much," but I believe the more open we are about these things, the more change we can effect. My sister, who is disabled, says, "I wish our parents had better lives, then we would have had better lives." She's a very forgiving person. Violence is a chain and it didn't start with me, and it didn't start with the "agents of chaos" described by Thom. Both my parents grew up during the depression. Neither had even a high school diploma. My step-father's father was brutal, for example, once plunging my grandmother's hands into boiling water for something she said. My mother had five children, no money, and a drunk for a husband, but a religion that said she couldn't leave him. And what if she did anyway? Women's opportunities were purposely limited so the they COULDN'T leave brutal men because that was the church's way of control. I was very judgmental about her for many years, and some of that was justified, but not a lot of it. Everyone who hits a child as viciously as she did, (well, they both did) makes a choice to do so. So some blame is in order. Yet, I regret some of my judgements. Yes, she was very violent, but when I look back at her life, it was all just so sad.
This violence and cruelty is just so unnecessary. To this day, I blame the church - fairly or unfairly.
I hear you, SuZie, I agree completely with your conclusions as to the source of much of the pain your mother experienced, and I feel a lot of sympathy for the brutality you, then, had to endure. It is terribly sad...absolutely. Thousand of years of the Catholic Church perpetuating patriarchal standards and commands has caused incalculable amounts of pain. :(
"Generation after generation..." Only reflecting on the mutual anger of the siblings of my mother's generation did I realize the story told of the previous generation was about estrangement and misery, too. What is fascinating is the degree of conviction my Mom and her siblings had that they were the people who knew how everybody else should act. They hated and judged all the "usual suspects", completely oblivious to acting out mutual antagonism in their own relationship.
Exactly...and how perceptive of you to connect the dots between your mother's childhood experiences and how she behaved toward you. As Alice Miller has suggested, your Mom and siblings weren't just copying the behaviors of their parents, although that's part of it. In some unconscious region of their body-mind they were now avenging the powerless children they used to be by displacing the rage they didn't dare show their parents, onto smaller, powerless others who couldn't hit back. Now THEY were the "powerful ones," someone had to listen to THEM...and somewhere inside of them, that must have felt "good." :(
There are some excellent comments here and I can't add much. Trump always reminded me of an angry little boy with a box of matches. Is he a deliberate chaos agent? Probably not as his businesses, for all their corruption and ruination of others (like his contractors) were organized enterprises designed to make profits. A better example might be how Hitler developed his Reich, with overlapping and confusing levels of authority (for example between the Party and the state governments or between different arms of the national authority) so that no one person could gather too much power.
I have met people who lived on chaos, and that seemed to give them a certain "control" of their lives, always being in a soap opera crisis of the moment. And I suppose a person without a deep understanding of history or government would see the news, particularly as distorted by Fox and the like, as an example of how chaotic the world is (and by implication how necessary a strong leader was). But as others have said some people just like to smash things. I would guess they have deep anger and sickness, perhaps reflecting their own sense of very low self-esteem. They have holes inside them that can never be filled by either praise, momentary success or the attention brought about by doing endless damage.
I agree with all of what you said, doc, regarding people who appear to love chaos. One guess is that people like Trump play the game called, "Let's you and him fight." They ultimately feel powerful when they set in motion conflict between others. It comes from a need to feel that they have an impact on people. "I cause conflict and chaos, therefore I am."
Oh yes, Madeline and Bob. As The New Yorker once put it, Trump thinks he looks big by making everyone else look small. Compare that with Gandhi's statement that, "A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create." Trump will never get it.
I have known many people who were very disruptive, in order to get a reaction out of someone who just wants to ignore them. You are right on, I feel sorry for the needy one and I feel sorry for the one who wants to get space between the needy one.
I had always thought that this chaos was and would be on the periphery of our 2 party system ( and a nod to those heady days of the peace movement during the 60’s and 70’s which as you said resulted in extreme leftist sects-but the country became less reactionary and the WU/ Black Panthers/SDS factions became less relevant). But the Steve Bannon erupted on the scene in 2015 and he espouses nihilism and I couldn’t figure out where fit it. And now it makes sense as his purpose is bring chaos and he brought that into the WH, and left the road map as he was escorted out.
I would really like to know what he did to become persona non grata at the Oval.
Mitch, the Panthers didn't die out because they were irrelevant, but because they were attacked and killed off by, I believe, the Oakland police.
Yet again, it appears that the white, male power structure couldn't tolerate self-confident men of color asserting their right to oppose their own oppression.
I have no idea what happened to Steve Bannon but my sense of the former guy is that he can't stand anyone who doesn't function as a complete reflection of him. If Bannon had an idea of his own that might've been enough to get him banished… Who knows? Bannon and Stephen Miller, to me, are as scary as Trump because they seem the most unconscious and disconnected from their feelings, with no capacity for empathy with other human beings.
The newest sociopath on the block, in my opinion, is Ramaswamy. The fact that the media is beginning to be dazzled by him gives me spielkas. (anxiety, in Yiddish)
Madeline, I agree w much of what you say but I was at school in DC in the early 70’s, just enough to witnessassive protests, a few heads split open, but nothing like 1970 when RFK stadium was used as a jail and tear gas was something you got used to on the way to class. The Panthers were around and Rennie Davis (SDS/Chicago 7) spoke in our auditorium and we were still willing to go out there and make a difference. But the draft ended ( lottery instituted), the war was winding down and Nixon resigning in disgrace helped keep the lid on. There was a definite sea change, enough of one that peanut farmer w an engineering degree in nuclear energy was elected president. But I do remember Hoover hunting down the panthers.
Thank you, Mitch, for filling in those details. I was at Cal Berkeley in the late 60's and early 70's. I was demonstrating a lot also and aware of the Black Panthers and their efforts to protect their communities. I just read an article that states that "...at least 29 members of the Panthers were killed in confrontations with or ambushes by, law enforcement in the decade after 1966. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, 21 and 22 yrs. old, were gunned down by 14 police officers as they lie sleeping in their Chicago apartment." And yes, this all occurred under the reign of terror ordered by J. Edgar Hoover, he of questionable mental stability, in his ongoing fear and hatred of civil rights activists of all stripes. This is heartbreaking to remember...
The so-called "successful" males who are thugs, know that they are just greedy narcissists and they don't like themselves, IMHO. They know they don't know the purpose of government, the difference between dictatorship and democracy or capitalism and communism or socialism. They look successful on the outside but they're rotten to the core on the inside and they know it, that is why they are so miserable and they want everyone else to even be more miserable who makes less money than them or even more money than them if that person is a free thinker or intellectual or a truth seeker. We need to have standards for anyone who can vote. A knowledge test, a character test and IQ test a common sense test, must all be given before a person can register to vote or attain any government job especially policing the populace.
Agree that we should have standards to vote, but who would formulate and administer those standards? .....and while we're discussing standards and qualifications, I believe they should be required of any candidates for public office (and parents,) as well as for doctors, teachers, police, etc.
If Canada can do it we can do it!
We SHOULD be able to do it.
I agree Mr. Johnson. We need a test to be administered before a citizen can vote.
I should be the one to create and administer the test and have the power to enforce the decision about who gets to vote and who does not.
You and those dear to you would be well advised to agree with my ideological positions an any subject.......
On second thought, let's just keep doing it the way we are because it is working so well! /S
I disagree with the categorization of any of this excrement as "recent." May I remind Mr. Hartmann that we have always had what used to be called "yellow" journalism? That the so-called "holiday" (holy day?) of Thanksgiving was inspired by news reports celebrating the massacre of indigenous people, where the word indigenous refers to the fact that they were already here? And finally (for now), that the so-called "Spanish-American" war happened after the explosion of the USS Maine in the harbor of La Habana, after which corporate journalists urged United States intervention, which led, as it has ALWAYS led in the case of this country, to the occupation and attempted annexation of ALL the countries that were fighting for their independence from Spain... including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and to the bombing and commission of atrocities against ALL of these countries.
Cuba, mi patria querida, is STILL under occupation...
Wow, I love it Ms. Brandon-Perez. Thank you for saying it. My best, most admired friend is a native of the White Earth Band of the Northern Great Lakes marge of what is now the United States of America. STILL under occupation after 500 years. Indian is a misnomer. He is an Ojibway.
That is why I used the word indigenous rather than Indian, Mr. Dobbertin. I am a descendant of taínos in Cuba, as well as Sephardim / Ladinos. The taínos were amazing fighters, and they are honored in my homeland, particularly Cacique (Chieftain) Hatuey and his wife, Caciquesa Anacaona.
Cuba under occupation, how is that? The US is leasing a part of Cuba on Guantanamo Bay, but has no say or influence in the government or the Cuban economy.
Mi bisabuela (great grandmother) used to say: no hay remedio para la estupidez...
Wow, Mr. Farrar, do you really believe the evil, vicious sanctions against Cuba have no influence on their government or economy? Do you believe the same about Nicaragua? Chile? Guatemala? El Salvador? Haiti? etc. I am certain you are aware of President Monroe's contribution in this area. If the Chinese held a: "lease" on tiny Rhode Island; how would Americans feel about that?
You just changed the subject and moved the goal post, while putting words in my mouth and I don't appreciate that.
You said Cuba was under occupation. Evidently you don't know what an occupation is.
It has nothing to do with sanctions. I don't approve of the sanctions, not at all, in fact they are counter productive, they enable the rulers to blame the misery on los American's..
And the Monroe doctrine and Americas sins, to protect the financial interest of corporations, has nothing to do with sanctions and certainly not occupation.
Having said that I am sore pissed about how the "liberal media" is promoting the interests of Exxon Mobil, Coca Cola and under international corporations by financing right wing death squads, and the latest the demonization of Venezuela for the horror of Venezuela actually believing that their oll belonged to the people of Venezuela. Pissed on Exxon Mobil, who uses the CIA and our government like a tool to overthrow the country, failing that, they starve and cripple Venezuela by cutting it off from access to capital and trade.
But that is not occupation, The CIA and Mi6, overthrew Mossadegh, and installed a puppet (the Shah) which led to the Mullahcracy, Greedy fucking capitalists have ruined the world, including Africa and Asia, and these countries are tired of it and shifting their alliances to Russia and China, blithely unaware that they are going from the frying pan to the fire, and welcoming in the new colonialism of these rising super powers.
Anyway Sanctions have only caused Iran to develop it's own skills and defense industry, just like Henry VII's tariffs, forced England to become a producer nation, not an importing nation and thus by the time of Elizabeth I, a world super power.
Mr. Farrar, I was responding to the word "influence" which you used. If I seem to have conflated sanctions with occupation. My apology. That's not what I intended. I should have been clearer. It seems we actually agree on the effects of colonialism/imperialism throughout the world.
I agree, tariffs helped England's domestic economy to expand greatly during Elizabeth's four decades in power. The country was broke when she ascended. But Tariffs, English piracy, legitimate sailors like the unmatchable Cook, along with slave trade, business and technical innovations allowed the Brits to jump out ahead of most of the rest of the world. It did not hurt that England was loaded with coal, tin and oak trees either; and surrounded by bad enough weather to sink the Spanish Armada. The U.S. built its domestic industries with tariffs also. My god! Does that mean I must admit trump understood something important?
I believe it was no accident of History that Shake-Speare was producing the greatest cannon of literature in the Western World at the same time. His foster father, who reared him from his teen years on, was Sir William Cecile the "prime minister," Secretary of State and confidant to the queen most of those four decades. Cecil was also foster father to Sir Francis Walsingham. The Western World's first official, professional, government spymaster. He was also foster father to Sir Philip Sydney, the great Elizabethan poet, whom I was forced to read in my high school years. Ugh! It is no coincidence that Cecil owned the most impressive, large library in England; if not also in Europe. And this at a time when printed books were a rare, new cultural artifact. Cecil was a voracious, lifelong reader. He died as one of the wealthiest and certainly the most powerful man in England.
I see some parallels with the U.S. In the first half of the 20th century the U.S. went to the moon and Hollywood's movies became the standard of the world. All after the U.S. emerged unharmed and in fact healthy economically and triumphant with its atom bombs after WWll. Am I dreaming? Or is there a parallel?
And every time the members of the United Nations vote on sanctions, every country votes to end them; only two vote to keep them in place: the United States of America and the Zionist State of Israel.
To try to understand these people, I recommend reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings while imprisoned in Germany. He uses the term stupid but not as currently understood. He uses it in the sense it’s not malice
Interesting you tube videos on Bonhoeffer.
We all have known someone who could not resist agitating and aggravating others and who seemed bent on provoking conflict and controversy. In that it appears to be a state of mind or a habitual posture and behavior, it might qualify as a mental illness. However, it is exceedingly difficult to pin down mental illness as a separate quality exhibited by individuals which are clearly identified and apart from inclinations, attributes, and learned behaviors. I suspect that mental illnesses arise in response to social, political, and economic conditions which prevail during a given segment of time. I also suspect that the people who see chaos as a tool or methodology have experienced enormous confusion and chaos in their lives and are unable to envision a life without disruption or to see the utility and benefit of organizing structures for dealing with problems. I am a bit uncomfortable with the concept of mental illness because it is too easy to believe that it is fixed or immutable. Scientists claim, I believe correctly, that approximately 90% of cognition is unconscious (as distinguished from "subconscious". Many of the dysfunctional patterns we see are derived from unconscious process and ingrained conceptions which are learned and extremely difficult to unlearn or replace. But the best approach is to work at expanding conscious awareness and trying to reduce confusion and ignorance. Most of these people seek attention and understanding and they are not getting those things in our sick society.
Saying that "cognition" is unconscious is an oxymoron Mr. Elliott. An "unconscious process" is something altogether different. Wouldn't you say that "Conscious awareness" seems to be a redundancy? What does it mean?
Mr. D., It did not occur to me that I should refer you to my posting on Substack until after I had gone to bed. I haven't quite figured out how Substack is organized but I believe that you can go to their site and read my chapter under my name free of charge as a visitor. The title is "Embodied Knowledge: What it is and Why it is Phenomenally Important". I just posted it a few days ago. It is a very thorough discussion of my understanding of knowledge, which is the cognition one has created in the course of one's life encompassing much more than just linguistic symbols or information. I would appreciate any feedback. If I have gotten anything wrong or if you disagree with my analysis, I would like to know. This is a topic that is near and dear and that is of utmost importance to the preservation of democracy. Now, maybe I can sleep. (The chapter was selected from my unpublished book manuscript).
Mr. Dobbertin,
I suppose I should use the disingenuous line used by the Republicans and say that I am not a scientist. You may know more about that topic than I do. However, from my reading and understanding of the work of neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, I believe that cognition is commonly defined as either or both conscious awareness, which has signifiers that are linear and articulable in real time, and unconscious process, which does not involve articulated thoughts, language, or linear conceptualizations. All cognition utilizes the physical elements of mind and body, such as synapses, nerves, neurochemicals, glia, etc., and ordinarily there are always simultaneous and indistinguishable processes on two or more levels which include emotional and other sensations, perceptions, intuitive and reflexive elements, memory, and data processing. The cognitive/emotional divide is an erroneous split that causes myriad problems and cannot exist in a healthy human being.
I’m not sure what you are arguing or disputing. I think that you are correct that “conscious awareness” is redundant. My use of the term ostensibly reflects the typical view that we have motivations, beliefs, feelings or emotions, and possibly other things going on which have an automatic or habitual nature and are only understood and changed when we identify them with some precision or accurate analysis. It certainly is possible to make an effort to become more aware of how we have been affected by experiences and perceptions and to do our best to choose an alternative response. Encouraging or teaching others to access their innermost cognition is the job, in part, of educators. We are seeing the results of their failure in the people who exhibit a need for chaos, in my opinion. I hope that helps to clarify my meaning.
I understand the "genesis" (meaning origin) of the chaos. Everything ends up like it starts for life itself comes full circle: "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." The United States began through chaos and violence, and so it shall end with same. Whenever that is.
Rohn, I certainly understand your analysis and don't disagree. Many civilizations have probably ended or devolved in this direction. I am also hoping for something like an evolution of consciousness regarding the laws of human nature. Human beings seem to thrive in a culture of affection and acceptance, the feeling of belonging and of being important as an individual also.
When relational needs are not met humans become angry, envious, and that can lead to interpersonal violence. Our existential need to work together on issues like the climate catastrophe requires that we evolve methods of resolving interpersonal and inter-group conflict in nonviolent ways. Methods exist for learning how to do this and more and more people are attracted to learning these methods. I cast my lot with them…🙏♥️
Now you're talking Ms. Taylor. Good stuff.
Thank you, Ms. Taylor for such a thoughtful and caring comment. However, I have more down to earth matters to concern myself with at the moment. And though I imagine you have no frame of reference respect that my world is not yours. https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/jacksonville-he-wanted-to-kill-niggers
Rohn, your anger and resentment is very much on display, via your postings here and on susbstck.
Your rants are counter productive. And you do come across as a black version of Timothy McVeigh.
This country was built on the genocide of the natives and the enslavement of Africans, and instead of admitting the sins, and remedying the situation, they exaggerate the situation, by being even more exclusivist in less obvious ways, except for those that suffer from systemic and institutional classism and it's subset Racism.
Fret not Rohn, The bill for all of the greed and pollution, classism and racism is coming due.
Venting the spleen is cathartic. I understand, pent up anger and outrage, needs to be manifested externally, and apparently that is what the Maggots, KKK, Fraternal Order of Police and Constitutional Sheriffs, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Boogaloo boys are all about, venting their spleens. Just like Timothy McVeigh vented his anger, resentments did when he bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.
You are right, Mr. Kenyatta, that your world is not mine and it is fine with me to be reminded of that. I am in no way speaking down to anyone, especially you, whom I admire. I believe you call in to Thom's show and I always appreciate when you do.
And thanks for the link to your substack...🙏
Thank you, Ma'am. You possess a really positive aura that transcends the amorphous mass of electronic nothingness called "cyberspace." Thom is a man that I could not, possibly, be more different from in terms of politics (because I have no politics of a partisan sort) but he is one of my intellectual gurus. Nothing in this world intoxicates me like sheer intellectual horsepower. He has taught me much as a writer and intellectual.
As usual, your words are poetic Mr. Kenyatta.
Thank you for your kind words, sir, and ditto and Amen regarding Thom! Let's all keep on collectively honing our ability to limit the destructive effects of those who are lost in the abyss of hatred.
Stay safe...😌🌸
Amen sister, amen (and Awomen). I just fear it is much too late and pray, for the sake of my children (all girls) that I am wrong. I am intimately connected to the Schwartsgeist, the Black Intelligentsia. We move surreptitiously; you cannot see us and, for now, you can not hear us...but we exist. As such, I know things the general public does not and this is one time in my life where I pray to be wrong.
But, I doubt it.
I also want to, publicly, thank you for your subscription to LookingNWords. The podcast is coming...soon and will be free to paid subscribers. Know that I am a dissident, a heretic but I promise you one thing, and one thing only, and that is the gift of thought. I was trained in law and I deal in facts, no matter how uncomfortable. You may recoil at my presentation, at times, but you will never find my facts to be flawed; 'cause facts, is facts.
I was rather unsurprised to find that you were a psychologist...I felt it. Ergo my previous comment about transcendence. I, very much, look forward to more interactions with you for I am already fascinated by your blatantly obvious intellect.
Be well, my human sister.
Be careful for what you wish.
Have you actually read, front to cover, the Turner Diaries, it is the bible of the racist right, and their numbers are astronomical compared to the hey day of the KKK or Silver Shirts.
We know them as Trump humpers.
I suggest you read the Diaries until the end, this is the end that these white racist nationalists are working towards, and Trump has given them legitimacy.
William, I don't know if I could tolerate reading even one sentence of the Turner Diaries but I appreciate being reminded of this infection of the mind. If delusions are beliefs that help a person retain a fundamental sense of themselves, like the foundation of a house supports the entire structure, then the delusion of white, male supremacy functions to support the kind of people who, to the detriment of the rest of us, derive their sense of selfhood from the color of their skin and their gender.
The book, RISING OUT OF HATRED, by Eli Saslow, chronicles the trajectory of Derek Black's awakening from a KKK promoter to someone who was able to repudiate supremacist beliefs.
I'm not naïve but I look for signs of transformation… I need to know that they exist. 🌸
I know what you mean, but for every Derek there are a hundred thousand true believers.
A reformed enlightened racist does not change a movement or mentality, anymore than an atheist, such as myself, can porselytize believers. I don't even try, cause I don't care, but believers scare the scheiss out of me, the majority of the right wing are believers.
I hear you, brother...and I agree that it appears as if we're outnumbered. It's true that a relatively small number of insane guys can get a lot of others to commit heinous acts of violence through fear and intimidation. :(
But I support men like you and the values you embody. You spread these values daily, without knowing it, just by being who and how you are. I trust in that.
Thanks but finding people (not just men) who are able and willing to do thinking for themselves, is a chore.
There are beliefs and opinions.
Beliefs are almost impossible to discard or change without doing harm to a persons sense of self, their identity,their ego, and When they do shed a belief, like a snake sheds its skin, the person usually does so after adopting another belief system. And to convince themselves they become radicalized, more a true believer than one born into such a family, radicalization caused by cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is manifested physically, awkwardness, trembling, sweating, nervousness
Opinions can be arrived at or acquired. An acquired opinion is the typical Fox Viewer or one who listens exclusively to hate radio, or 4 CHAN, 8 CHAN OR OANN, Town hall or any of the thousands of right wing, and even extreme left websites.
Opinions arrived at are entirely different from beliefs or acquired opinions.
These opinions require thought, analysis and critical reasoning skills. No bandwagon effect, no being swayed by "authorities" (always question authority, sectarian or secular), but that takes time and mental effort
Yes, thank you Mr. Kenyatta. The genesis of all empires spring from violence. It is just as certain that all empires come to an end. Where are the Mongols? Hittites? Romans? Babylonians? etc. Where lies the end of the American Empire? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end?
For CERTAIN! And, despite appearances, I am less gleeful about it than I should be. But, what goes around, comes around for it is the universal order of things.
The Mongol Horde may have fallen apart (from what I have read) more from the death of its leader, Kublai Kahn, than from any violence, within or without.
And it appears, Rohn, that you wish to accelerate the collapse. Do you think that you will emerge victorious or unscathed.
Not to worry, global warming will bring your anger and vengance down on the country and the world, a lot sooner than a social revolution.
...and a lot more permanent.
The Spartans come to mind. They were so violent and so militaristic, and so bereft of human emotions, they had to hire people to write their war glory stories and poetry. "Another reason for the diminution in the number of citizens was that increasingly many Spartan citizens could no longer afford to pay their dues in the agoge system as that society became increasingly divided between rich and poor. (https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_Caused_the_Decline_of_Sparta#google_vignette)
Sparta's growing wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, which meant that fewer men could meet the financial demands of a citizen....The premium placed on stability and order meant that the Spartans distrusted change, and this conservatism meant that Sparta could not change to meet the challenges it faced. "
Does this sound familiar? A violent and militaristic state, constantly increasing financial demands of citizens on behalf of a wealthy minority while destroying the country from within due to an unwillingness to change? A country that, due to ingrained conservatism, cannot meet its challenges?
Vandalism is likely a personality disorder, but in the context of the current essay, it is likely aimed at weakening confidence in US Democratic governance. For all of my 76 years on the planet, I have watched as the GOP has increasingly focused on arguing that government should be run more like a business, and that is why there is no law and order, and too much regulation of business in a "free" country. History has pointed out that the "chaos" Tomm talks about is the first stage of creating momentum for a fascist takeover. They vandalize then blame it on minorities that are "out of control" like Black American violence (esp BLM protests), but also Jewish control of the economy, Hispanic "illegal immigrants invading the USA." and so forth. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler nor Trump are examples of very bright people, but they are ruthless and crave autocratic rule. Ironically, as Prof R.O. Paxton has pointed out, they have no vision for governing which is why hegemonic wars are a convenient distraction to create national unity and a perverted sense of patriotism.
One thing that I hope Thom will get to eventually is that their antisocial violent behavior has highlighted weaknesses in our judicial and law-enforcement systems. Trump plays the courts like a harp because he as been well instructed in how to game the system for profit. He has just taken it one step further and has games the system for power. Of course, as I just noted, he really has no vision for governance - it is just tear down the radical socialist democratic system and replace it with an autocratic CEO - Trump, or DeSantis, or Ramaswamy, or....